Colin O'Brady on Climbing Mount Everest | Joe Rogan

What are my limits? What are our limits collectively? And can my physical expression of this inspire other people to innovate, create, and do amazing things in the world and in other modalities and canvases? Well, that's one of the weird things about people doing extraordinary things like what you did is that you absolutely will give other people fuel to accomplish things in their life. Inspiration is so critical for human beings. I mean, I draw upon it from so many different sources, from David Goggins and a bunch of my other friends, my friend Cameron Haynes and a lot of other people that are endurance athletes and different people that have interviewed on this podcast. But there's something that happens when you realize that people can do extraordinary things that makes you believe in the potential, not just in that person, but also in yourself. Absolutely, I mean, Goggins is a great example that I've never met him, but I've personally derived inspiration from that guy. I mean, he gets out there, you can't run 100 miles, like I'll show you I can run 100 miles, you know, and he's pushing his body to extreme ways. Or, you know, I love what he says about the 40%, you know, I think about it a little bit different in my mind, but like, what are those limits? I mean, I don't know if it's 40% or 50%. People quit, you know, people quit. That I can't voice comes up and, you know, he's proven it so as many other people of actually when you say I can, actually when you don't stop, you get stronger. And for me, in my own story, in my own journey, I think that final day, that final 32 hour push proves it. Three days before that, you know, I'm videotaping all this, I'm trying to capture as much content to be able to share with people of this crazy, weird place that's Antarctica by yourself. And like, day 49, day 40, 50, like, I'm literally crying into my GoPro being like, I'm running out of food, I'm exhausted, I don't know if I can keep doing this, I'm just like, worked, right? But sure enough, I don't say I can't, you know, it's that 40%, it was at 50%, that's that moment when I wanted to quit or I should have quit. But then, the strongest, most amazing moment of my entire athletic career that spans decades happens three days later because I kept pushing. It's not like I rested for three days and pulled that off. Like, I never took a rest day in 54 days. I pulled my sled 12 to 13 hours every single day, and on the last day, it was the strongest as possible. So I think it proves, if we can push through that I can't moment, know it's not gonna work, that you can get there. And unfortunately, you know, we talk about 40% with Goggins, I actually think a lot of people quit at 1%. They're sitting behind their office, they're like, you know, one day I wanna travel overseas. Or, you know, I hate this job, you know, I've got this great business idea. But immediately they're like, but I can't. Like, I've got no money to start this business. I've got no this. Like, when I first set off my first world record in 2016, 2014, I sat with Jenna in my house, one bedroom apartment with a whiteboard, and we're like, I'm gonna see if I can set the world record for the Explorers Grand Slam, something fewer than 50 people in the world have ever done, and I'm gonna be the fastest, climb Everest, climb Denali, climb Kilman, draw North Pole, South Pole, back to back. I hadn't climbed a bunch of mountains. It'd be pretty easy to say I can't. Oh, and by the way, we have no money to do this. We have no platform. I have like 200 Instagram followers. Like, I mean, I have like nothing. But we just sat there and we're like, no, instead of saying I can't, let's say I can't. What's the first step to that? We literally get out our laptops and I'm like going to, like, we're like, we wanna build this big media campaign where lots of people follow and get pressed. Like, we know nothing about, we have no background in this. Google, what's the difference between marketing and PR? I mean, we are literally asking Google, like the most basic of all basic questions. But, you know, we continue to say like, let's get coffee with our one friend who knows something about this. We should probably get a website. How does one build a website? And it goes on and on like this. How long ago did you start this journey? So that was 2014 when we dreamed that up. So the world record was the C5. It was like five years ago. Yeah, so to see if I could set the world record for something called the Explorer's Grand Slam. So it's climbing the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, seven summits. And before that, had you done anything like that or had it just been athletics? So I grew up in Portland. So I grew up like in the outdoors, but like, I mean, to go climb Everest at Denali, so we're planning, no, like the short answer is, I mean, I climbed a few mountains. You know, it's not like I'd never been in the snow before. I'd worn crampons. I was like, I had not zero experience, but like not even close to the experience that you would think one would need to do that. And to just break world records doing it. Not just do it, but like be the fastest person to ever complete it. You know, like I said, it ended up being 139 days straight through to climb all those mountains. Didn't, you know, I think we had to clip up a second ago of something on Everest, but yeah, I mean, to do all of that, it started from this place of not of believing I can. And then, you know, it's fun, again, it's fun to talk about the epic adventure, but for me, it's actually fun to talk about what happened behind the scenes of that, because what actually happened, like people, you know, applaud our success now. This is me. This is you walking? Walking across a ladder that's, you know, about 300 foot hole of crevasse on the other side of it that you have to go through to on your way up the Mount Everest climbing route. And so your crampons are clicking on the, and you're hooking them on the ladder as you walk across. And if you fall, you die. Yes. Okay, great. So, fuck man, watch this again. This is so awful. It's so awful to look at, because you're basically just walking this tight rope on, let me hear it. Listen to that click. Folks, I implore you to go to the Instagram page so you get the full freak out. Look how those, they're tied together too, those ladders. Yeah. Tied together. This is gonna be a 300 foot cavern over there. Oh, fuck all of this. Jesus. Oh, and you're looking down because you have a GoPro on. And we cut the sound off at the end there, but I go at the bar and I go, whoa, because like there was 50 of those ladders, but I was cheering every fucking time I got across. I was like, yep, one more down, whoa. You did that 50 times? In the Kumbua, I actually go through that section a couple of times. It's a very dangerous section of the mountain, but yeah, went about 50 of those ladders, so. When you went through Everest, did you see the bodies? So I fortunately didn't see any bodies up there. Fortunately or unfortunately? Fortunately. I mean, I'm not like trying to see dead bodies. But they're more prevalent on the climbing route on the north side. The day that I did summit, three people died on the day that I summited. So when I, yeah, when I, so to set the, I mean, to talk about Everest, I mean, for me, is major setbacks. It was the eighth of nine expeditions in this sequence. So I'd done 100 days of other expeditions leading up to Everest to do this Explores Grand Slam world record. I'm trying to climb Everest. I'm exhausted from 100 days. I just come from the north pole before that Kilimanjaro, before that, you know, Elbur's, all these other mountains. And then I make my summit push on Everest. I'm not climbing with a guide or anything. It's just myself and one Sherpa who I met climbing in Nepal the year previous when I was training for this. And so it's just the two of us. And we climb up into camp four. So Everest has, you know, four camps. There's base camp and then there's camps progressively higher in the mountains so you can get your body acclimatized. And we get up into camp four. Have you read the book, Into the Nair, by John Krakow or anything about Everest? Okay, there's a famous book that's written about it where 11 people die. And right in this moment, it's called the Death Zone where you enter above 26,000 feet. The human body basically can't survive for long, even with supplemental oxygen. And this massive snow storm and wind storm blows in like kind of out of nowhere. And we're trying to push for the summit. It takes us two and a half hours just to set up our tent and get inside. And we know like it's over. Like we're not, we're not gonna summit Everest. Like in this storm, there's no way. So we just survive the night, wake up the next morning, still getting pounded by this weather and actually have to climb back down the mountain. So climb back down the mountain all the way to camp two. And they're like, well, that's probably it. Like you don't usually like spend a night out in the Death Zone and like make a second attempt. And you've already tried all these other mountains. You're a hundred plus days in this journey. And I was like, man, I want to see if I can get back up there. Like, and this other guy who I met on another team had some supplemental oxygen. So I had to use some of my supplemental oxygen. So my supply stores are limited now as well. And so he says to me, hey, I'm not gonna go up. I'm sick. But if you get back up to camp four, there's a couple bottles of oxygen that you could use of mine. If you somehow get back up there. So sure enough, Pasaeng Bodhi, the same as Sherpa was climbing with amazing climber himself. We get back up to camp four in the Death Zone and we decide we're gonna go for the summit. And we call back down to base camp. What's the weather forecast? And they're like, well, it's the exact same forecast we told you before. It might hold, in which case you'll be fine. Or it might turn into what you guys just survive. And if you're not near your tent and you're up on the summit ridge of Everest, like it's gonna get like pretty bad. And so we kind of go back and forth. Should we go for it? Shouldn't we go for it? We just decided to go for it. But this crazy thing happens, which is you may have read about this or heard of this if you know much about Everest, but basically no one climbed Everest in 2014 or 15 because a huge avalanche killed 16 shorepours in 2014. The mountain was closed. And in 2015, there was a huge earthquake in Nepal that shut the climbing season down. So no one's even climbed the mountain in two years. But all of a sudden, because of these weather delays, I end up there and there's a hundred people going for the summit on the exact same day. So basically traffic jam on the worst fucking place to be in a traffic jam possible. So Pasang Bodhi and I, we go, okay, let's figure out how to climb this thing. We leave camp. There's a photo that I took for leaving camp. There's all these lights going up the side of the mountain. And it's because there's one rope that everyone works to put in. So everyone's using the same rope. And all of a sudden we're behind a hundred people. And if you stand there, wind chill minus 40 degrees, like we're gonna get frostbite, like we're gonna not be able to make it. And so Pasang Bodhi and I look at each other and we go, let's unclip from the rope. And so we actually decided to- Ah! We actually decided to unclip from the rope, climb up all the way to the balcony from the South Call, the Death Zone area I was mentioning before, up to about 28,000 feet on rope. Because we actually think it's more dangerous to climb roped next to all the, behind all the people, than it is to risk a fall. Right, you don't know those people. You don't know what they're like. And people are, I mean, you're on Everest at 28,000 feet. People are walking, I mean, one step per minute sometimes. I mean, it is brutal. And so, I mean, I'm walking maybe two steps every 30 seconds, but I'm like Usain Bolt, like flying past these people. Yeah, this gives an example of like, so you're in it like the world, the worst place in the world to be, you know, in a traffic jam, as you can see here from this photo I posted that day. But anyways, I get up to this edge and it finally, it's too steep. It's too dangerous for us to be unclipped from the rope any longer. We're like, we're just gonna have to clip in and settle in behind. You know, we'd pass like 50 or 60 people, so we're in much better place than ever. I still have this one big puffy coat, it's actually the same puffy coat I used in Antarctica, the big like Michelin Man coat. And I'm like, we're gonna slow down. I better put this big jacket on. And so, I take my jacket off, I undo my gloves real quick to put this big jacket on over me to warm myself up. And I look down and my right hand is black. Like just black as black can be. And I'm like, holy shit, like tell, tell, sign a frostbite, like, oh my God, like the same thing. We've got school kids following along. We got family fun, the whole thing. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna lose my right hand. Is Jenna still gonna love me? What's my family gonna think? And then, I don't say anything to Paseeng Bodhi, I jam my hand back in these big gloves and I go, okay. And I don't recommend this thought process, but I go, well, if I'm gonna lose my hand anyways, wouldn't it be cool to lose my hand, but also have some of it at first? So. How black was it? I mean, it was black, like black, black. Like this can of coffee? Yes, like black, I mean, it was black. Did you take a picture of it? So the sun was just below the horizon, so it was like dusk. And I look down at this point and then the sun comes up, so I jam my hand back in this glove and I don't say anything to Paseeng Bodhi, I'm like, let's keep pushing for the summit. So we go for the next three hours. And the whole time in my mind, I'm like, oh my God, I'm such an idiot, like I'm gonna lose my hand, my hands frostbite and this and that. And so we get up and we're about 30 minutes below Mount Everest summit. And it should be a beautiful moment for me. Like since a little kid I dreamed, like, summoning Everest would be like the greatest accomplishment of my life. Oh my God, and I'm thinking like, just in this dark place. But I also haven't taken a single photo basically. And I'm like, well, I gotta get like a photo or a video of the famous Mount Everest summit. So I pull up my GoPro to shoot a video. I shoot this short little video which kind of shows this crazy exposure that I'm on, like one side, 5,000 feet down into China on one side, 5,000 feet in Nepal on this tiny little knife edge ridge. And of course I have to adjust my gloves again. Yeah, this is from the summit. And I pull my GoPro out, have to mess with my gloves, put it back in, and I look at my hand and I start going waving my arms in the air, go, Poisang Bodhi, my hand's back, my hand's back. And he's like, what are you doing? It just so happened that the glove warmers in my gloves, the chemical hand warmers had broken open and the charcoal and the copper filings of the chemical hand warmers had dyed my hand black. Oh, geez. And my hand was completely fine. Oh, God. So yeah, this clip here, if you play it from the top, it's me reaching the summit. That's Poisang Bodhi right there. So when... I'm on the summit of Mount Everest, top of the world, no words can describe. Wow. So yeah. Did you experience any discomfort in your hands before? So again, we're talking about a lot of this podcast, a bit about mindset, which is one of my favorite topics. Just like we said, you could convince yourself that the salt man is fixing your foot. I'm on Everest, I'm at 28,000 feet. My brain's not working very well. I know that the weather's coming in bad, that people are gonna get maybe frostbite based on the forecast. And I look down and I see my hands black. Where does my mind go? It's not like, oh, let me think about this. My hand warmer must have broken open in this. I'm like, my hand... And it was weird, because I was like, I didn't feel my hand getting cold. My hand feels fine, but I'm on Everest, my hand's black. That means, in my brain, I'm like, I have frostbite. So it's just like, it's a weird thing where you can take your mind, the positivity of this. My mind went to the negative immediately. Your hand's gone, it's frozen off like the end. Oh, Jesus. What happened to the people that died? Were they on the rope? Yeah, so unfortunately that day, the weather actually did get pretty bad later in the day. So fortunately I was able to get down before the weather got too bad. But the people that died that day, one slipped and fell down these ropes over on Lhotse, which is the adjacent mountain, but sharing some of the same ropes on the same route. And then two people died from altitude sickness. So basically either running out of oxygen up there, not being able to get back down in their tent. I think those people actually did get carried back down to their tents that night and then died in the tents that night. So it's called cerebral edema, which is basically your brain fills with fluid from being at the high altitude and not getting enough oxygen. And it's a killer up there. And one of the crazy things about being up there is you read about it, but you really can't rescue somebody very easily up there. To carry a human body down and to rescue them is nearly impossible. And I kind of always thought in my mind, if I saw somebody lying on the ground, I would summon the energy to pick them up. And I was actually coming back from the summit and I was on the South summit. So just below the Everest summit, 28,800 feet or something like that. And this Brazilian woman who I had met in base camp named Thijs, who had become friends with you in Nepal for a couple of months. You start talking to people, getting friends with other climbers, whatever. And I see her lying on the ground with her head like lean back in her oxygen mask off to the side. And I'm like, oh my God, like this is the moment that I most feared. Like somebody who I know is lying here on the side of the mountain. And I think to myself, I've got to pick her up. I've got to pick her up and somehow like carry her down this mountain. And I lean over to grab her and I try with all my might to do anything. And I realized I can't move her six inches. Like I'm completely exhausted. Muscle's not working, brain's not working. So I do the only thing I can think to do is I just wrap her in my arms and I say, Thijs, like if you can hear me, it's calling. You need to get up. You need to get your oxygen mask on. You need to start moving. Like, please get up, please get up. No response. She was climbing with a shirt, but another guide right next to her. And they were like, look, like we're having trouble with her oxygen mask, but we're going to fix it. Like it's going to be all right. And I was like, just kind of going through this intense moment. I'm like, what do I do? How can I help? And it's as weird as, you know, I'm not proud of it necessarily to say it, but like there was nothing I could do. Like it's just the most helpless feeling in the world where you want to help the common person, I mean, this person, I'd be a friend, but if any human being is lying on the ground in the snow, you're like, I want to help this person get down this mountain. And I was just, I'm so close to on my limit up there in the summit, there was nothing I could do. Fortunately, she was not one of the people that passed away that day. Her team did get her oxygen mask on her and she actually made it to the summit and back down safely. Wow, so she went up from there? She ended up going up from there, which to me is like another whole crazy part of that story. But it was an interesting lesson for me in like, you know, you hear these stories, you can't move bodies up there, there's nothing you can do to the rescue and people have been criticized for not, you know, doing these crazy rescues when things have gone wrong up there, but it really hit home for me, like how hard it would be to move somebody down that mountain from that altitude. And so when you're up there, you know, unlike, you know, Antarctica, I was actually alone and Everest, like I said, was pretty crowded day. Like you're essentially alone up there. Like if you can't keep putting one foot in front of the other up in the death zone, there's not a whole lot that you can do. So the three people that died up there, did they leave them there? I'm not sure with those specific people, cause sometimes they, you can get like a large team of people to slowly lower people down, you know, in a weird way, it's actually easier to lower a dead body than it is to lower a live person. Cause a dead body, you don't have to worry about breaking bones and things like that. If you're lowering someone over rocks and things like that. So I actually believe those bodies are no longer there, but there are quite a few bodies, you know, still on the mountain and particularly the north side, the Chinese, so you can climb it from two sides, the Nepal side, which is more commonly climb where I climb, but the Tibet side, the Tibet side is known for having a lot more of the body still actually on the climbing route, for sure. So, but for me on that, I mean, that day in a crazy way continues on because I got back down to camp four, and I'm thinking I'm going to sleep for the night rest and come back down the mountain. Usually it takes a few days to get back down the mountain. At this point, you know, I've only got one more mountain to climb that can finish my world record, the Explorer's Grand Slam. And I was about two months ahead of schedule. So if I had climbed Denali in the next two months, North America's tallest mountain up in Alaska, I was going to set this world record that I was, and so I called back home to Jenna and I was like, I made it, like I made it. And earlier in the day when my hands had gotten frozen, I had actually had heated boot warmers. And so I had turned the heat and my boot warmers up as hot as possible. So I'm like, if my hand is frostbitten, what could my feet look like? So I drank those up as hot as possible. And so Jenna's like, hey, like how are you doing? Like you all right? We've heard some reports over social media that's been a really hard day up there. Like I'm like, yeah, I'm all right. Like no frostbite, no injuries, like I'm good. And I was like, well, actually I burned my feet and she was like, oh, frostbite, like how bad is it? And I was like, no, not frostbite. I actually burned two like silver dollar circles in the bottom to both of my feet from turning my boot warmers up too much. And she's like, wait, let me get this straight. Like you climb Everest, you don't get frostbite, but you burn yourself. She was like, you, your feet, fire, like just like, it's a bad situation. But then she goes on and she was like, she literally said the next thing she said to me, I will literally never forget my life. But she goes, so you're in your tent, right? You took your boots off and everything, you're curled up in there. I'm like, yeah. And she's like, well, I actually need you to put your boots back on. And I'm like, excuse me? Like I just, what? Like she was like, yeah, so we've been doing some calculating back home. And it just so happens that if you can get to the summit of Denali in the next week, you can set not one, but two world records. And I was like, well, that sounds nice, but like I'm on the summit of, below the summit of Everest, how the hell is that gonna work? She's like, okay, put your boots back on down now. Climb all the way back to base camp. There's no time for you to sleep, but a helicopter is gonna take you to Kathmandu. No time for a hotel, no time for a shower, but an evening flight is gonna take you to Dubai to Seattle to Anchorage. And instead of having three weeks to climb Denali, you'll have three days. But if you can do all of that, you'll set another world record, like ready, go. Jesus. So I was in disbelief, but knowing better than to disobey not only my amazing wife, but the planner and logistics expert and running the back on all this, I sure enough put my boots back on, wiped the slate clean and found myself, just a hundred hours after standing on the summit of Everest, I found myself over in Alaska, trying to push up to the summit to try to set the two world records, and not just the one. Wow.