Climbing Asia’s Forgotten Mountain, Part 3 | Nat Geo Live

This might be one of the most beautiful camps I've ever... had the pleasure to stay at. (Hilaree laughing) (applause) Only at this camp at 18,200 feet, were we finally on our route which is totally insane. And we were only, maybe a thousand feet below the summit when we were like, "Oh, yeah! This is it! We're definitely here. We're where we're supposed to be." You can see how narrow this ridge is that we're camped on. And it was just big enough to set up a three-man tent and a two-man tent. And this was where a lot of hard decision and human dynamic kind of came into play and I also think that's what's, this is what makes this trip so interesting. And... so hard at the same time was that essentially we knew from this point on we knew we only had food for two, maybe three days. And... we didn't have the resources for all five of us to go to the summit. And the climbing was only getting more complicated as we went higher and... a lot of back and forth went on at this point. I think, Emily knew that she was gonna be staying at the camp and not climbing higher. And at one point early on, I was... sort of talking with Mark and they were very clear that they didn't have confidence in me climbing. They did not want me to go to the summit. And it was very hard for to me to swallow that. I felt really strong, I was very motivated to go to the top. I thought a lot of the trip was about Mark and I and our partnership and so... to be told that was very difficult, to say the least. What followed was kind of this back and forth. Eventually we... I was going to be on the climbing team but something just, just wasn't sitting right with me. And that night, I went to bed and just to give you a little bit of like, what was going on while we're trying to make these decisions is that the wind on this ridge was blowing it was gusting, up to 70 miles an hour. And we were really exposed on this ridge so it's coming under the tents it feels like you're gonna get blown away. We all had every stitch of clothing on that you could possibly... that we had! And we're still kind of these shivvy-bivvys. We're still freezing.

We knew we only had enough food for three days. We had very limited ropes and no idea how far it was to the summit, still. So, kind of, all these pressures. We were, you know, almost 40 days into this expedition. We'd all probably lost like I'd lost ten pounds off of this frame already. Mark was like, bone thin and... we knew we still had, you know, two weeks to go. So, there was a lot of stress. And it was probably one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. But, there had been this... seed of doubt placed in me from the day before. And over the night it just grew and I felt like our trust as a team had really been compromised. And my place in the team, was to be with Emily. And I made the decision... you know at like, five in the morning to not go to the summit and Cory took my place and the three of them left right after. So, this is the three of those guys heading out from our high camp. So, just to give you an idea of the complicated climbing that followed. We were at 18,200 feet. They climbed for eight hours that day and they gained about 400 feet. And these are like, pretty good climbers. They didn't get very far. And they went up and down. That's why it was kind of like the jungle. It's like going up these ridges and down these ridges. And they set up a two-man tent and the three of them slept in that. And this is just a short video about what their climbing experience was like going towards the summit. (instrumental music)

Conrad: Now we're on the south side of the sun. We can see our objective. We have high hopes. It's hard, it's real climbing. This is alpine climbing. (wind rustling) But meanwhile, Emily and I were still at high camp. And we were there for four days on this tiny little ridge, trying to just survive and make it through. And Emily is pretty cheerful. She was trying to cook these, like scones that are supposed to be cooked on a stove on... on the top of our pot and they never cooked, obviously. We ate them anyways and totally had horrible stomachs after. So in those four days... we stopped eating after the first day because we were trying to save food for the guys. We realized as we walked around the tent that the guys had taken all of the ropes. And this was totally an accident... with all the conditions and everything going on none of us thought it through. But, we had no ropes and it was really dangerous climbing. And if those guys didn't come back, we had no way to get down. So, it was... pretty terrifying.

At one point I sent-- and I'll get into some of our communications. But, our communications were so crazy that we were communicating with Emily's dad in the United States and he would call on a satellite phone to Taylor at base camp. And at one point, I texted him "So, you know, we don't have any ropes. So, if you could tell Taylor that that if we have to come down it's gonna be, it might take us a while." And I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm writing this to Emily's dad!" And he writes back and he's like, "What?" (audience laughter) I was like, "Yeah!" But, this is a, this a little video from Emily about base camp, or high camp. This is the fourth day that we are stuck... at 18,000 feet. In this tent, in the wind... Going a little stir crazy. But, this is our view. I'll show you. (wind rustling) That's Tibet. That's Burma. This is where base camp is.

So, Emily and I watched... she had like, her phone and you could see that, sort of, a solar panel We were watching like, episodes of "Portlandia" on our phone. (audience laughter) Laughing hysterically and since, I've tried watching them at home and they're so not... as funny. But, they were really funny up there. So, Mark made the decision, when he was at... you know, I think the high point was about 18,800 feet. He thought it looked like the summit was still almost a thousand feet above them which would definitely make it the highest peak in Southeast Asia. But, they turned around. And it was a really tough decision but, it was definitely the right one. We were too strung out. And Emily and I had already made the decision that as soon as they were back we were gonna set up the two-man tent. The next morning, early, we were gonna grab one of the ropes grab as much gear, as we could and take it down. Because, we still had to set up anchors all the way down and do all these rapps in order to get back to base camp, rappels. So, we got up at about five-thirty in the morning and the two of us started heading down the mountain. And, the relief I felt, as soon as we started walking down. It's indescribable. And I think, I've thought about it a lot. I think it was the first time, in over a month that we were walking on terrain and knew where we were going.

So, if you can imagine that. We were like, retracing our steps for the first time since we'd landed in Yangon. We were setting up anchors and rapping down that huge north face, trying to get down. Finally, we walked down to camp one and we had a little stash of food and we had all this extra fuel. And we got totally like, crazy like, maniacal and we're like, burning everything... that was in our packs. Which was sort of funny. But, we ate a little bit of the food and we went down to base camp. And not too long after, the guys came down, because you know, all the ropes were in place and everything. And, it was like, this crazy re-entry. All of a sudden, we were like, sitting on dry ground. There was a fire. We were eating real food, instead of freeze dried food. And then, slowly as we were walking out like, things from civilization started coming back at us. Like, I remember the first time, like, sitting in a chair. All that kind of stuff hits you as you're coming down when you've been that stretched out.

And this picture, was kind of at the height of how hungry we were. I mean, these villages don't have anything. So, we were just, we had basically two bowls of rice a day for ten days over 130 miles of walking. This picture is awesome because everything sounds so grim and desperate. But really, we laughed a lot. And Emily, is totally smoking a cigarette and drinking rice wine out of this bottle that we were sharing with the locals because it was the first alcohol we'd had in six weeks. We hadn't had showers in a month. Emily doesn't smoke, by the way. Neither of us, none of us, do. But, like, smoking really helps if you're absolutely starving. And we were. So, that might be the only cigarette I've ever seen her have. Just saying that, because she doesn't smoke. Finally, we made it back to Putao. And we had showers and we were so strung out that I literally like, saw the shower and freaked out. I couldn't take a shower. I... pulled out my disgusting sleeping bag and laid it on this bed with nice sheets and I slept in my sleeping bag. And I didn't take a shower for like 24 hours after getting back to Putao because I just didn't know what to do. Like, my clothes were like, part of my skin at that point and so I was afraid to kind of, take them off. But, this was post shower. Emily even put on some make up and we were drinking beer. It was really surreal, basically.

So, just one more video kind of, taking us out of the mountains. (instrumental music) (speaking in Burmese) Wow, you guys, oh, my God! Decompressing a little? (speaking in Burmese) (unclear) are not easy... (instrumental music) Hilaree: Full stripping down of all the mirrors and the most stretched out and beaten down I've ever been. So, I'm gonna go back to this picture that I started with. Because, now you have a better idea of why we were like that. I'm just gonna, kind of, end with a quote. This is a quote from Mark Twain. "Twenty years from now you'll be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowline, sail away from the safe harbor catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." And then to add, in my own words kind of what I learned from this trip is-- Don't let the fear of failure stop you. Fear of failure is a really powerful thing. It's paralyzing at times. But, there's no courage, without fear. So, embrace the fear, love the suffering, take a risk laugh at yourself, a lot. And dive in and try 'cause, you'll never have an adventure without a little fear. That's it. Thanks! (applause)