Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to the NFL Players Podcast. I am a
Speaker 1: nist Willie. It's a pleasure to have formal wide receiver
Speaker 1: Mark Patterson back with us on the podcast. For those unfamiliar,
Speaker 1: Mark Patterson is an NFL legend, an entrepreneur, currently an
Speaker 1: executive at Sports Illustrated, and one of two former NFL
Speaker 1: players to ever scale the Seventh Summits. If you like
Speaker 1: to hear more about Mark's story, pause here and check
Speaker 1: out episode seventy one on NFL Players Podcasts entitled Rescheduling
Speaker 1: Everest Today, Marcus here to discuss the last leg of
Speaker 1: his Seventh Summit journey, the sin of Mount Everest, and
Speaker 1: what life has been like ever since. Let's listen in Mark.
Speaker 1: The last time we had you on the podcast was
Speaker 1: May of. You were set to complete your seventh Summit
Speaker 1: Journey when Mount Everest the highest mountain in the world
Speaker 1: at twenty nine thousand, thirty two. However, the world got
Speaker 1: undersieged by COVID. Everything changed. You didn't plan it. You
Speaker 1: share with us how the pandemic force you to postpone
Speaker 1: the climb for an entire year. Fast forward to May of,
Speaker 1: It's goal time. You're on the precipice of as sending
Speaker 1: lucky number seven. I remember last time on our podcast
Speaker 1: you touched on how important visualization is. Take us into
Speaker 1: your head. It's you and everest now help us to
Speaker 1: see what you see. Well, and ya, thank you for
Speaker 1: being on the pod. I really appreciate it. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, lots going on since we last talked, And
Speaker 1: you're right, visualization is so much of it. And until
Speaker 1: you get up to you know, the death zone camp
Speaker 1: for five feet, it's just a test of nothing else
Speaker 1: and just endurance, right, And that's something I didn't quite
Speaker 1: factor in in all this. Uh. I think the biggest
Speaker 1: surprise for everybody's how long you're on that mountain. I
Speaker 1: was up there for two months. That's a long time
Speaker 1: to be somewhere at seventeen thousand, five hundred feet. Will
Speaker 1: start there, working our way up to base camp, which
Speaker 1: is at that that altitude. Every night going to bed
Speaker 1: and sub zero temperatures, climbing into a sleeping bag, sleeping
Speaker 1: on ice, sleeping on rocks, always going into that sleeping
Speaker 1: bag with a beanie gloves full park. You know, things
Speaker 1: on your on your on your legs to keep yourself warm,
Speaker 1: socks and then climbing up and and you're not eating
Speaker 1: at the most gormet restaurants up there. In addition to
Speaker 1: the at uh, this was literally every day we had
Speaker 1: to avalanches coming down on us. And you know, the
Speaker 1: first week, um, it's terrifying. You know, you run out
Speaker 1: of your tent, like where you're gonna go, where you're
Speaker 1: gonna hide and and uh, and after about a week
Speaker 1: of that, it's just you realize there's no place to run,
Speaker 1: there's no place to hide, and so you just stay
Speaker 1: in your tent and like if you get hit, you
Speaker 1: get hit, and that's just the way it is. And
Speaker 1: then you know, as you as you get into the
Speaker 1: ice fall, which is called a Kumba ice fall, is
Speaker 1: a this is now coming right out of every space camp.
Speaker 1: It's two thousand feet straight up from seventeen five up
Speaker 1: to nineteen five to Camp one, and it's it's literally
Speaker 1: straight up and you're dealing with these gigantic thirtyt ice
Speaker 1: walls ice columns that are constantly collapsing. I had to
Speaker 1: go through that thing six times, and um, every single
Speaker 1: time I went through it, it was a new route. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was a new route because it's a glacier, and
Speaker 1: a glacier means it's a frozen river, and because it
Speaker 1: warms up during the day, all these ice columns and
Speaker 1: big rocks and everything else come down on you. And
Speaker 1: so you know you're navigating through a lot of people
Speaker 1: get hurt, a lot of people get killed. Um. I
Speaker 1: fell off a ladder backwards, hit my head. UM. Surprised,
Speaker 1: lucky that you know, something worse didn't happen. And then
Speaker 1: and then you know, the just kind of the unknown
Speaker 1: COVID hit camp up there big time and knocked a
Speaker 1: lot of expedition parties off. And then we had two
Speaker 1: cyclones today. So when you and I talked again in
Speaker 1: twenty right, we weren't talking about cyclones. We weren't when
Speaker 1: we were talking about COVID. But I think we all
Speaker 1: thought it would be over by then, And I wasn't
Speaker 1: talking about avalanches coming down and ice falls collapsing, and
Speaker 1: falling off ladders and climbing up sixty ft ice ice
Speaker 1: ice walls. These are all things that because I didn't
Speaker 1: have the experience on that mountain, it was just all
Speaker 1: new for me, and I had to go through that
Speaker 1: and mail and get my head around that. But Mark
Speaker 1: you met Jerry Real and you say you were a surprised.
Speaker 1: You said, you know about the endurance and those things.
Speaker 1: You hadn't experienced this mountain but other people had, so
Speaker 1: I know you did your homework. What was the biggest surprise.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a different deal, you know. It's
Speaker 1: just like you know, we're we're till we're talking ball,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of this is what this pod
Speaker 1: is about. You know, ex former players coming on and
Speaker 1: chatting with you, and you know, I I spent a
Speaker 1: ton of time. I literally saw every YouTube video there was,
Speaker 1: you know, just see to really scout it out. But
Speaker 1: until you're in it and you feel that small and
Speaker 1: you've always seen it and you've seen it in movies,
Speaker 1: you've seen it on TV shows, and you've seen it
Speaker 1: on this YouTube video, it's just a different deal. Just
Speaker 1: like when you're playing the NFL as a kid, you're
Speaker 1: watching it on the field until you get out there,
Speaker 1: right and they blow the whistle and you kick off
Speaker 1: and run down and you get whacked by somebody like you.
Speaker 1: It's a different game, right, and like, wow, welcome to
Speaker 1: the NFL. You know, that's that's the type of thing.
Speaker 1: So what what did you learn through it? Now looking
Speaker 1: back telling me this experience. Yes, we headed a football.
Speaker 1: It's nothing like until you go on the field. One
Speaker 1: life lesson have you taken just from this aspect of
Speaker 1: it what we're talking about, Well, I mean getting back here.
Speaker 1: I think to me, it ties back into your first question,
Speaker 1: like you know, you get up there and you're ready
Speaker 1: to take that on and you know we're we It
Speaker 1: was very tricky in terms of us even getting into
Speaker 1: that position. And so what it took is a heck
Speaker 1: of my mindset, you know, to make sure that this
Speaker 1: thing could actually happen. And I had trained um extremely hard,
Speaker 1: mostly here in some valley Ida who had six thousand
Speaker 1: feet and going up and down the mountain and going
Speaker 1: up and down the mountain to train my body. And
Speaker 1: I had to tap in at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I had to tap into all those chips I'd put
Speaker 1: in the bank. And so having a very strong mental
Speaker 1: u mindset of being able to overcome everything. And what
Speaker 1: happened to me when I set out at twelve thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning on May days ago was we had
Speaker 1: a strong wind blown and left right with all these
Speaker 1: ice particles, and I wasn't wearing the right kind of
Speaker 1: of of eyewear, and I end up getting snowblind in
Speaker 1: the first hour. Okay, so that was number one. Number
Speaker 1: two is I hadn't been eating really anything in the
Speaker 1: previous thirty six hours because we thought we'd be summiting
Speaker 1: around and so I had to run out of food
Speaker 1: and we're eating this freeze dried stuff that is like
Speaker 1: sawt ust with hot water on and my system just
Speaker 1: didn't take well to it. So I was whatever I
Speaker 1: was putting down, I was coming back up. So I
Speaker 1: was running on very little energy. And you just can't
Speaker 1: underestimate how steep going from twenty six thousand up to
Speaker 1: nine thousand two feet is and so the entire time
Speaker 1: it's just a the steepest lab you can possibly manage,
Speaker 1: and it's just a grind. And I was just not
Speaker 1: on my game on that particular day. And and where
Speaker 1: that um a snowblindness really kicked in, which was very difficult,
Speaker 1: is as you get to the top third of the mountain,
Speaker 1: you're going through something called the Hilary step. A lot
Speaker 1: of famous things have happened up there, and as you're
Speaker 1: reaching down to try to clip in, uh, your care
Speaker 1: of beaner, which is attached to your waist on this harness,
Speaker 1: to a fixed line that is tied to the mountain. Um.
Speaker 1: That was hard enough because my depth perception. But there's
Speaker 1: also five other roach land there too from past expeditions
Speaker 1: that are frayed and cut, and so if you don't
Speaker 1: tie into the right line, you know, you can find
Speaker 1: yourself twelve thousand feet straight down. You're looking at Tibet,
Speaker 1: you know, down the other side. Not to mention, I'm
Speaker 1: stepping over dead bodies, you know, and one of which
Speaker 1: was my tentmate um in Antarctica, Don Cash. And so
Speaker 1: I was fighting, like all these different elements of going,
Speaker 1: and I just kept saying, you know, I just keep going,
Speaker 1: keep going, don't quit, don't give up. There's so many
Speaker 1: people out there, like my daughter, both my daughter's but
Speaker 1: my daughter and Millie who is epilepsy and she's gone
Speaker 1: through so much and if she doesn't quit, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to quit. And so it became just a complete
Speaker 1: battle of trying to get myself off that mountain in
Speaker 1: one piece. So we know, you prepare it physically. I'm
Speaker 1: hearing you how you were able to continue to going.
Speaker 1: You at self talk, How did you practice the mental
Speaker 1: point of it? You know, And I really believe this
Speaker 1: that it goes back to for me. You know, there
Speaker 1: was no other football player up there, and then I'm
Speaker 1: in a small club of people have actually pulled this
Speaker 1: off as being a former NFL guy. But but I
Speaker 1: really believe it is from my preparation what my coaches
Speaker 1: taught me back in the day, my Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: coaches from from Tom Flores, you know, Jim Moore, senior,
Speaker 1: Don James, my college coach, and others, about what it
Speaker 1: takes to excel on the field, to keep going to
Speaker 1: don't quit no matter what um. And that's really what
Speaker 1: I had to tap in too. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would have got there if I
Speaker 1: hadn't prepared my body to go to depths that I
Speaker 1: didn't know I even had right to pull this up.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I didn't tell you too, is
Speaker 1: when you're at twenty six thousand feet plus, it's called
Speaker 1: the death zone for particular reasons, because you're you're you're
Speaker 1: you're actually you're you're dying. Your body is going backwards.
Speaker 1: And and I had run out of oxygen on the
Speaker 1: mountain and so this is coming down about five and
Speaker 1: I literally was gasping for ever trying to get back.
Speaker 1: And then even once I got back and I got
Speaker 1: a new tank, uh at, because I spent the night
Speaker 1: at twenty success from five hundred through a series of mishaps,
Speaker 1: I ended up spending the entire night with no oxygen
Speaker 1: and I was hallucinating, I was going through all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff. And then I ended up going down the
Speaker 1: mountain by myself, which wasn't supposed to happen. And it's
Speaker 1: the steepest of the steep that you can possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: So this is where a lot of times people die
Speaker 1: is when they are coming back down the mountain because
Speaker 1: you're so fatigued and you're you're not checking in with yourself,
Speaker 1: you're not clipping in, and people fall over and they
Speaker 1: just can't make it. And you know, I tell you,
Speaker 1: I've never been to that edge before. And there's not
Speaker 1: many times at least of my life where I was
Speaker 1: I was saying, today is not the day that Mark dies.
Speaker 1: I've got to keep going. Today is not the day
Speaker 1: that Mark dies. And I don't know, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: never said that to myself, but it happened to me
Speaker 1: coming down that mountain, so Mark, I was dragging a
Speaker 1: question point why, a great question? Why? I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know. Look, I've always been I've
Speaker 1: always set some some big goals, you know, And and
Speaker 1: from from from going and playing at Washington, and and
Speaker 1: it really taught me to think big, especially when I
Speaker 1: hit the NFL and Ellen Davis and playing with the
Speaker 1: Raiders and seeing how big big business works and like
Speaker 1: you can do. And I kept asking myself like why
Speaker 1: not me? Why can't I be the guy to be
Speaker 1: the start Aready went receiver? Why can't I make the NFL?
Speaker 1: Why can't I be an executive sports illustrated? Why can't
Speaker 1: I climb out? Ever? And these other six mountains I
Speaker 1: got there. I don't know if you remember this, but
Speaker 1: when we originally talked to I think you asked the
Speaker 1: question like, how did you get into climbing Wally? You know?
Speaker 1: And And the reason was because I was going through
Speaker 1: a tough time. And look, we all go through rough patches,
Speaker 1: and and the only thing, after being stuck in this
Speaker 1: place for a couple of years that I could find
Speaker 1: myself out of it was put the biggest goal I
Speaker 1: could possibly think of, and I wanted to do something
Speaker 1: athletic because I always stayed active. And so I said,
Speaker 1: can I play in the NFL still? And the answers
Speaker 1: now and they won't let me back in. And so
Speaker 1: growing up in Seattle, Washington, I'm sure you played up
Speaker 1: there many times. And you've got Mount Raineer out there
Speaker 1: and all these mountains around and I had, So I
Speaker 1: had grown up a lot of legends that had had
Speaker 1: some of the many of these mountains around the world,
Speaker 1: including the Mount Everest, and I typed in the computers
Speaker 1: any NFL player ever climbed the seventh Summers I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be that guy. And it really helped me
Speaker 1: pull myself out of that dark place and into the
Speaker 1: light and through nature just calming me. And and all
Speaker 1: the gifts have come, um, I mean many many gifts,
Speaker 1: non financial, but many gifts in terms of what this
Speaker 1: journey has meant to me. So that's the reason why
Speaker 1: I got into it. So you're going through a challenging
Speaker 1: time of your life, and your antidote is to do
Speaker 1: something enormously physically challenging. That that was your thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was my thoughts because I I just I had
Speaker 1: to distract myself as something I could get really excited about,
Speaker 1: and I had to step into the fear and do
Speaker 1: something that I had never done before and never done
Speaker 1: high altitude mountain climbing. I didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know where to start. And so by
Speaker 1: putting my energy in that, you know, there's this whole
Speaker 1: saying that where your where your focus goes, your energy
Speaker 1: always follows. And so my energy all of a sudden
Speaker 1: and my focus went towards something I was really excited about,
Speaker 1: like what was going to happen, And then it just
Speaker 1: took me into this whole new world and meeting people.
Speaker 1: And now I've been literally all over the globe. I've
Speaker 1: been on seven contons. Seven summons represent of the seven
Speaker 1: highest peaks. I've been the most extreme conditions. I thought
Speaker 1: when I originally started this, and the is is that
Speaker 1: it would be seven summons seven years, but I didn't
Speaker 1: factor in mother nature and code um. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and seventeen, I was knocked off Dennelle, which is the
Speaker 1: highest mountain up in North America and in Alaska, by
Speaker 1: minus eighty degree weather. And so again it's just like
Speaker 1: the grit that you've gotta have to come together and
Speaker 1: sleeping and being really uncomfortable, um, you know, and suffer. Um.
Speaker 1: Is this something. I came down and I said, I
Speaker 1: can't quit this goal. I can't quit this goal. So
Speaker 1: two eighteen I came back and I was able to
Speaker 1: summon it. And then just like when we talked in
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty, I was all set to go, and
Speaker 1: then the whole world, as you know, shut down one
Speaker 1: by one. And I put so much into this one goal.
Speaker 1: Would be like, you're gonna playing the super Bowl, and
Speaker 1: now the super Bowl gets canceled? So what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? And it's just I reset my mind about
Speaker 1: a week later and said, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 1: to create an opportunity out of this disappointment and I'm
Speaker 1: going to train even harder for what this is gonna be.
Speaker 1: And that's what I did. And you know, here I
Speaker 1: sit now in this place of having just come off
Speaker 1: Mountain Everest, which you know, I look back on it
Speaker 1: and I just I pinched myself because I was so
Speaker 1: much But I just had to do with luck of
Speaker 1: the weather because we had this cyclone that hit us
Speaker 1: on the before and after that we came up the mountain.
Speaker 1: So Mark, when what was the light facing depth? You
Speaker 1: could have died what what I was? I was. I
Speaker 1: was just the last person up on that mountain and
Speaker 1: I was the last person to come off. I was
Speaker 1: the only person. I was the last person on that mountain.
Speaker 1: I was the last person standing on top of that world.
Speaker 1: It was just me and I had a shirt and
Speaker 1: my sharp was I couldn't understand the English number one,
Speaker 1: and so I had a hard time communicating at this
Speaker 1: I issue that couldn't see and um number two. He
Speaker 1: was in a big, big time hurry to get back
Speaker 1: down the mountain because that he had plenty of energy
Speaker 1: and he was doing great, and I just wasn't happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all bunk, you know, at certain times,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened to me. And I was I
Speaker 1: was a part of a charity program that I'm involved
Speaker 1: with here in in some valley UM called Higher Ground,
Speaker 1: and it's a big, big fundraiser. Got up in front
Speaker 1: of everybody, and honestly it was like PTSD to a
Speaker 1: certain expense because I showed this photo of me up
Speaker 1: on top of the mountain, and then I was talking
Speaker 1: about what that was like to try to get off
Speaker 1: the mountain, right, because people said, what's it like when
Speaker 1: you get out on and you know, you think you'd
Speaker 1: be up there, like you just scored a touchdown and
Speaker 1: hands in the air, and I was like, good God,
Speaker 1: now I gotta go all the way back down. And
Speaker 1: I felt the moan out there, and um, you know it,
Speaker 1: it was very emotional from me, and in front of
Speaker 1: all these people, you know, I I shed some tears
Speaker 1: and and and it's like this still this connection between
Speaker 1: fighting for my daughter um and knowing that she wouldn't
Speaker 1: quit because she has epilepsy, and my survival of Now
Speaker 1: I got to figure out how to get all the
Speaker 1: way down, and you know, I really framed it up
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, I actually failed
Speaker 1: on my goal. My goal was on that particular day
Speaker 1: was to climb Mount Everest, come down, calling my tent,
Speaker 1: and then go back up and climb loads to the
Speaker 1: fourth highest mountain in the world. And as I was
Speaker 1: coming down that mountain and I was facing you know,
Speaker 1: no oxygen, I was sliding on my butt down the mountain,
Speaker 1: um trying to get back to the base camp. And
Speaker 1: I was just like if I do that mountain, I
Speaker 1: will for sure die. And I had to go back
Speaker 1: to the original goal, which is just you know, everest
Speaker 1: is the prize loads thees is to throw in. But
Speaker 1: I had to, like my ego, had to cough that
Speaker 1: up and say, you know, there's other things out there.
Speaker 1: They are more important, like my kids and the girl
Speaker 1: alm with my my my mom and you know, my friends.
Speaker 1: And I felt so much love and support out there
Speaker 1: from all the people that were that we're coming in
Speaker 1: on Instagram and other places and rooting me on when
Speaker 1: I've seen those things, you know, a week before. But
Speaker 1: I just felt like, you know, that was that and
Speaker 1: it's just a mad It's just amazing that when you
Speaker 1: are faced with you, if I lay down right now
Speaker 1: and I don't keep moving, um, I'm gonna die. I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you this, this, this this great quote I
Speaker 1: heard from Martin Luther King that that just really moved me.
Speaker 1: And he said, um, if you can't fly, then run.
Speaker 1: If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk,
Speaker 1: then crawl. But whatever you do, keep moving. And that
Speaker 1: is the one thing that I just no matter what
Speaker 1: I knew, if I laid down and just like let
Speaker 1: me just take a ten min a nap. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd never come down that mountain, So I mean it
Speaker 1: was it was real. It was real, which was hard
Speaker 1: and coming down that's a great question. They were they
Speaker 1: were both equal to me because going up was so
Speaker 1: steep and I had no energy. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: only I was. I was existing on these small little candies.
Speaker 1: That was it going. And I was out there and
Speaker 1: for eighteen hours. I mean think about like for as
Speaker 1: football players, you know, we're not durance athletes necessarily. We
Speaker 1: were going We're sprint guys, right, you know you're a
Speaker 1: dB I was. I was a receiver, and so it's
Speaker 1: forty yard desk when you come back and you reaset
Speaker 1: forty yards and you reset. But eighteen hours for anybody
Speaker 1: is a long time to be exposed, especially at the
Speaker 1: top of the world. And getting up there was just
Speaker 1: like all I could do, and then getting down just
Speaker 1: it seemed like it became even harder because I was
Speaker 1: out there for all that time. And the only fortunate
Speaker 1: thing for of that day is that the weather had
Speaker 1: been awful, uh for the month of May except for
Speaker 1: that day and the day after the cyclone hit it
Speaker 1: in and dumped another four feet as snow. So the
Speaker 1: amount of luck that had to play, Like if the
Speaker 1: cyclone had hit, and then we would have been back
Speaker 1: into an in the thin air situation where it was
Speaker 1: the superstorm that came in. In the condition I was in,
Speaker 1: I doubt it would have made it off. You doubt
Speaker 1: you would have made it off. Yeah, I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: guys who played in the National Football League legends if
Speaker 1: we would, if our careers would be getting to the top.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing some kind of connection to how guys feel
Speaker 1: when they finished plan going down any point comes to
Speaker 1: mind as you hear me connect those two just as
Speaker 1: you were telling a story. That's what was going through
Speaker 1: my mind. As far as the legend. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you're actually you're really insightful. Nobody's asking that question, But
Speaker 1: I think I want to first say I want to
Speaker 1: credit trust UM and all the people involved in the
Speaker 1: NFL for the programs they have developed today, which, as
Speaker 1: you know, many many years ago, when I came out,
Speaker 1: there were no programs. You just went off the cliff
Speaker 1: and UM and so again I was on that cliff
Speaker 1: right and for two years I was lost, and as
Speaker 1: I was coming down that mountain. You know, I felt
Speaker 1: lost because my shirt would left me and I was
Speaker 1: the only one up there, you know, coming down, and
Speaker 1: it's a scary feeling because it is straight down and
Speaker 1: any mistake you make, it's over. And not just to
Speaker 1: me just falling over and and and dying like my
Speaker 1: tentmate from two thousand and nineteen when he died up there. Um.
Speaker 1: But but just avalanches. Um, you don't clip in and
Speaker 1: you trip, you know you're done. There's all these variables
Speaker 1: that come into it, you know, just the the aralone.
Speaker 1: You there's something when you get up to that altitude
Speaker 1: called cerebral which is your brain, adma impulmonary, which is
Speaker 1: your lungs, a deema. That's where because you're at such
Speaker 1: high altitude and you have hardly any oxygen, your brain
Speaker 1: or your lungs swell. And that's why I got so
Speaker 1: lucky on that particular night. Um, when I spent the
Speaker 1: night they could. A super came in about ten o'clock
Speaker 1: and said, you know, is everything okay? And I said,
Speaker 1: I ran out of oxygen. He goes, well, we ran out,
Speaker 1: he can't have any And I'm like, they hadn't, But
Speaker 1: that's what he told me. And I don't know why
Speaker 1: he told me that, but that's what he told me.
Speaker 1: So I spent the entire night. So just the fact that,
Speaker 1: forget the mountain and everything we've been talking about, just
Speaker 1: the fact that I survived, you know, another ten hours
Speaker 1: in my tent with no oxygen was a miracle, you know.
Speaker 1: And so going back to your question, I was lost
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, um and trying to struggle
Speaker 1: and find a way and find a way and find
Speaker 1: a way. But what I did find is that you
Speaker 1: just can't give up. You got to keep going no
Speaker 1: matter what. And that's what I did, whatever it was
Speaker 1: twenty plus years ago, and that's what I did, you know,
Speaker 1: forty five days ago. He was just I can't give up, Ia,
Speaker 1: just keep going. After you did the challenges you met
Speaker 1: your earlier and you said because a dark time I
Speaker 1: was going through. And once you created these challenges and
Speaker 1: you begin focusing on these mountains, did it give you
Speaker 1: clarity to be able to deal with the darkness that
Speaker 1: precipitated this? Yeah, it sure did. And that's another fantastic question.
Speaker 1: And it you know, at first you were going through
Speaker 1: the pain, and how am I going to go forward
Speaker 1: and and what it was I was going through a
Speaker 1: painful divorce. And so I know a lot of guys
Speaker 1: that are listening to this pod, either a friends or themselves,
Speaker 1: have gone through this, and so for me it was
Speaker 1: tough to break up the family and everything. But you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately I got over that and move forward. And there's
Speaker 1: this funny little thank called perspective. And as I got
Speaker 1: traveling around the world and I started getting involved in
Speaker 1: in various charities. The first one was with Chris Long
Speaker 1: and I was in the first class of water Boys,
Speaker 1: and so I went down to Tanzania and we went
Speaker 1: into the Serengetti, which is the desert down there, and
Speaker 1: in Tanzanian visits the people of the Massi tribe and
Speaker 1: it's just so interesting that, you know, they're one of
Speaker 1: the poorest countries in the world and they have so
Speaker 1: little their currency as a goat, yet they're one of
Speaker 1: the happiest people I've ever ever been around. And then
Speaker 1: I just experienced the same thing with in Nepal with
Speaker 1: all the sharp all they use Napoleon East people, you know,
Speaker 1: they make there there. I mean, I think they're lucky
Speaker 1: if they pull in, you know, six to ten dollars
Speaker 1: a year totally, and yet they are so happy, and
Speaker 1: they're so grateful, and every time you say anything to them,
Speaker 1: they're so you know, there's they're so loving and kind
Speaker 1: and and you know that the audience can't see this,
Speaker 1: but I've got these um these cords around the neck,
Speaker 1: and I was blessed twice by by these holy Lamas
Speaker 1: that where grant can stay passage and blessings to me
Speaker 1: to make it up and down, you know, Mount Everest,
Speaker 1: and it's just such an enduring thing. So you know,
Speaker 1: to your question, Yeah, I thought I was in over
Speaker 1: my head and how could I ever survive this and
Speaker 1: all this stuff? When I was going through my bad
Speaker 1: patchman with a little bit of perspective, was going, well,
Speaker 1: I might be going through a kind of row pass,
Speaker 1: but I got a way better than a lot of
Speaker 1: these other people, you know, through the world. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: other thing I'm hearing what you got in your tight spots.
Speaker 1: You were not the only person going up the mountain.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was your daughter. It was other
Speaker 1: people as well that you were thinking about. Tell me
Speaker 1: about that. I had to as a as a this this,
Speaker 1: I mean, this was going in both directions, but I
Speaker 1: could only go like ten steps at a time. So
Speaker 1: I go, Okay, give me ten steps, and I go
Speaker 1: ten steps and then I sit through on one knee
Speaker 1: and rest for another couple of minutes. I go, okay,
Speaker 1: Amelia wouldn't quit, so I gotta take another ten steps.
Speaker 1: So I go another ten steps and then rest on
Speaker 1: another for another couple of months. I got my other daughter, Claudette.
Speaker 1: I go, Claudette would never quit. She needs me going
Speaker 1: on point ten steps and and I just did the
Speaker 1: same pattern over and over and over and over and
Speaker 1: over for eighteen hours. And it seems crazy, but I
Speaker 1: just you know, you you're not talking to anybody. You're
Speaker 1: all alone out there. I've got a shirt, but who
Speaker 1: can't communicate in English? And he's just an arrush to
Speaker 1: get up and get back down. And so it's just me,
Speaker 1: like I had to self motivate myself through mentally this
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics with all these people, and I was going
Speaker 1: through all the categories, the cousins, the mom that you know, daughters,
Speaker 1: all these people, and it was just that the supply
Speaker 1: was endless. And like I said before, it was amazing
Speaker 1: too to see and feel all the support that I
Speaker 1: received mostly on Instagram. Um, I mean people by the
Speaker 1: hundreds coming into port the journey and whatever I said
Speaker 1: or however I was saying that it really seems to
Speaker 1: identify with like this challenge and this this new big
Speaker 1: challenge and the plight I was going through from not
Speaker 1: taking showers for you know, a week or two and
Speaker 1: you know, I never saw myself. I didn't see myself
Speaker 1: for really for two months, um, in terms of looking
Speaker 1: in the mirror. Just all those those normal things that
Speaker 1: you you you have, you know they'll go away. And
Speaker 1: so it's just it really meant a lot to me
Speaker 1: to have all that support. Did at any point you
Speaker 1: think about quitting, let's just just enough. What's going on
Speaker 1: with Mark? No, that's it, I'm finished. You never had
Speaker 1: any thought like that, You know what. I don't go
Speaker 1: into anything ever with any kind of a I guess, um,
Speaker 1: having the idea that I'm gonna quit that that's that's
Speaker 1: impossible to me, you know, like, there isn't anything that
Speaker 1: ever going like maybe I'll make it. Maybe. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you say that to me, it's done. I go
Speaker 1: into everything with the confidence that I'm going to get
Speaker 1: it done. And if there's tours, and there's always detours
Speaker 1: that come in, and I had plenty of detours and
Speaker 1: obstacles that hit me on that day. We're going to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to get around it. But whatever
Speaker 1: you do, just keep going. And this is serving me
Speaker 1: well for business, and it served me well for my relationships,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly worked for and things don't always go
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's rainbows and butterflies. I totally
Speaker 1: get that, but it's just to me, if you go
Speaker 1: into these things like half ass, then you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: get a half ass result. And I saw this in
Speaker 1: terms of full commitment, and that's really what the that
Speaker 1: the the response that that you know that comes to mind,
Speaker 1: and we had there. You know, there's twenty one in
Speaker 1: our expedition party that started this and only tenimated at
Speaker 1: the top, so that's what we're people did not make it.
Speaker 1: And there was probably three or four in that group
Speaker 1: that were very, very wealthy individuals that had the ability
Speaker 1: just saying, no, what this isn't for me. I want
Speaker 1: to go back and eat New York steak and have
Speaker 1: a beer and wine and you know which like would
Speaker 1: be nor right? I told he get that, but I
Speaker 1: don't think they were, Like they came into it with
Speaker 1: a committed right. They came into maybe they're they're eighty percent,
Speaker 1: maybe they're seventy, but they were committed and so that
Speaker 1: choice of being able to take a helicopter fly off
Speaker 1: the mountain was right there for them, which they actually did.
Speaker 1: And so so yeah, I mean it's all in commitment.
Speaker 1: Read again, and Mary, Here's why I asked. Mike Tyson
Speaker 1: said when he was writing at at his peak, he said,
Speaker 1: everybody has a game plan untiling you punched in the mouth.
Speaker 1: That's what made me ask once you went, I know
Speaker 1: what the plan was, I know what your middle preparation was.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about once you're blind, Like, I'll find a question,
Speaker 1: what was it like to be blind? Well, I've never
Speaker 1: been blind before. I've never experienced that. And I did
Speaker 1: get punched in the mouth, is Mike Tyson? You know?
Speaker 1: And I well a matter of fact, I got punched
Speaker 1: in the mouth like fifty times, right, And it's haunting
Speaker 1: and and like gets real, Like even when I pulled
Speaker 1: into camp in twenty six thousand and five and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is barren and this is not a place you
Speaker 1: want to spend a long time too. I had a
Speaker 1: dead guy laying in a tent next to me six
Speaker 1: ft away right, who had died on me twelve from exposure.
Speaker 1: And it's like, Mark, but you say that like like
Speaker 1: I had a did guy like like and then you
Speaker 1: like move it on. You do know a lot of
Speaker 1: people are listening when they hear that, that's like, whoa,
Speaker 1: this is in a graveyard A lot he wasn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's a lot of people in the graveyard up there,
Speaker 1: and it's gone, No, Mark, I'm talking about you. You know,
Speaker 1: I appreciate. I appreciate your question. What I'm trying to
Speaker 1: tell you is that as we're sitting here on zoom
Speaker 1: talking through this, you know, into anybody who's listening. If
Speaker 1: I were listening, I would say, oh my god, he seriously.
Speaker 1: And when you get up there there is there's such
Speaker 1: a mindset of self preservation because you're hungry, you haven't eaten,
Speaker 1: you haven't shared in ten days. You know you're you
Speaker 1: were supposed to be up there. Three days earlier the
Speaker 1: cyclone hit at Camp three. Our tents were on a
Speaker 1: forty five degree slow right, we had the avalanche is
Speaker 1: coming down on us. Um, you're you're hungry and the
Speaker 1: only thing you care about is yourself and that's the
Speaker 1: only way from the time that you get up there,
Speaker 1: and then you're looking straight up at this daunting like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this final, this final journey from camp four to the
Speaker 1: top and back down is going to take everything I got.
Speaker 1: And so what what your normal response when you see
Speaker 1: dead people like my tentmate up on the hillier step
Speaker 1: and this guy that was laying next to me or
Speaker 1: tent You know, you have compassion and and you know
Speaker 1: you feel bad and and and and you kind of
Speaker 1: go through that and it's just a whole different world
Speaker 1: when you get up there, and it's just like if
Speaker 1: you don't pay attention, that's going to be YouTube, right,
Speaker 1: And that's how picture it was. Literally when you share
Speaker 1: that wiment, what I saw was like you are alive
Speaker 1: and a grade so to speak, because people but you
Speaker 1: were still alive. And that quote with Dr King, it's
Speaker 1: like you kept moving no matter what's happened, what you experience,
Speaker 1: you kept moving. Man. I want to tell you I
Speaker 1: have a few quick hits on behalf of every legend,
Speaker 1: all the current players, the league, the owners whoever, Man,
Speaker 1: I feel like you did it for us. We are
Speaker 1: obviously you did all the work, but to have to
Speaker 1: know that we have a legend that that climbed the
Speaker 1: seven Summits, kudos man. I got a few quick hits
Speaker 1: and then we out favorite mountain climb of all time
Speaker 1: and why I could probably act in Coagua, which is
Speaker 1: down in Argentina, and uh, that was just fun to
Speaker 1: be in South America. It was fantastic being Mendoza. Mendoza
Speaker 1: is like the Napa Valley, so that's where all the
Speaker 1: um a lot of the wines come out of. And
Speaker 1: we just had a great group and I had a
Speaker 1: great experience and made at the top is the first
Speaker 1: time I've been to twenty three thou feet with no oxygen,
Speaker 1: no something mental anything, And uh, it was just a
Speaker 1: really fantastic time. And it was really a time where
Speaker 1: I was turning the corner in this dark patch that
Speaker 1: that I had gone through. Your favorite go to snack
Speaker 1: when you had high altitude, Well, I would love to
Speaker 1: have said it was a cheaper, because that's what I
Speaker 1: loved you at the time, Right, that didn't happen. Uh,
Speaker 1: just any kind of bar that will go down. But
Speaker 1: you know that's the hard thing to do because again
Speaker 1: there's all these tricks that come into play, and all
Speaker 1: those bars that you might get a grocery store, they
Speaker 1: freeze like brick. So the whole trick is how do
Speaker 1: you keep those things moist so they can actually go
Speaker 1: down your mouth? Taking on a linebarger across the middle,
Speaker 1: or taking all elements atop of mountain. Well, listen, I
Speaker 1: got hit. I wrote a lot plenty and that was
Speaker 1: so fun. I think after everything I just went through
Speaker 1: get by ten Ronnie Lyons. So I'll take Ronnie as
Speaker 1: he was on the field of forty niners, measure twice
Speaker 1: cut once are risk it for the biscuit. What does
Speaker 1: that say to you? Risk it for the biscuit, Risk
Speaker 1: it for the biscuit? Yeah? Mark, how can people find
Speaker 1: out more about you and what it is you're doing?
Speaker 1: It thinks a lot. You can reach me at Mark Pattison,
Speaker 1: NFL dot com. I've got on my social channels. It's
Speaker 1: something I didn't mention the that is this is important
Speaker 1: that the NFL is doing a film of this whole
Speaker 1: Everest journal, so that is coming out in early September.
Speaker 1: They've decided to make it the feat your program on
Speaker 1: NFL three sixty and hopefully everybody out there can watch
Speaker 1: and see what I went through. I mean, it's tons
Speaker 1: of footage. They've interviewed Humillian and former NFL player Jamura,
Speaker 1: who's my training partner here at Vester, is the world's
Speaker 1: greatest mountaineer who lives here in some valley. My daughters
Speaker 1: are in it, and so it will be I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be really exciting. Piece. Well, is there any
Speaker 1: thing that you've experienced on the seventh Summits that you
Speaker 1: would like legends to be inspired by that comes to
Speaker 1: your mind right now? I think the biggest thing for
Speaker 1: me that I've learned is number one is step into
Speaker 1: the fear. And we are all fearful of can I
Speaker 1: do this or can I do that? I think that's
Speaker 1: a big, big thing, right And then number two is
Speaker 1: action creates reactions. So you know, if you don't know
Speaker 1: which way to go in your stock, which I was
Speaker 1: um to take a step and and and that step
Speaker 1: will either lead you in the right direction, or you'll
Speaker 1: meet somebody will taking a different direction, or at least
Speaker 1: you'll know that that wasn't the right direction. But whatever
Speaker 1: you do, we got we were talking about the Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King, but you gotta keep moving and that's the
Speaker 1: biggest key. And then my my quote that I say
Speaker 1: all the time, I say to my daughter's every day
Speaker 1: is it takes a little more to make a champion.
Speaker 1: And you know, I had to train like that and
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, that's probably what saved
Speaker 1: my life. Man, Mark, This has been amazing man. Thank you, congratulations.
Speaker 1: It is an honor. Thank you for sharing your story
Speaker 1: with us, and the best is yet to come. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Matt. I appreciate all the support from
Speaker 1: you and the NFL. Oh this has been the NFL
Speaker 1: Legends podcast. To provide feedback or request a topic for discussion,
Speaker 1: email us at NFL Legends at NFL dot com.