 Richie, how are you brother? Yeah, I'm good mate, how are you? Thanks for having me. Oh, my pleasure. Anything about Everest? I'm all ears and I've got big enough ears as it is. Fascinating, so royal, well there's lots of stuff. When you wrote your email to me, yeah, you've spent a lot of time in Thailand, I believe. Yeah, yeah, I was living there between work and climbing, so work in the Middle East, climbing the Himalayas and holiday and living in Thailand. Yeah, that was the way of things. I loved, I've loved every single minute of being in Thailand, even when I got my nose broken by a Thai doorman. Yeah, that happens a lot, that sort of thing. It was still a great night, little tip there for you. If you ever get mugged in a Thai nightclub folks by the bar staff, which they used to try and do, I don't know how it is in the modern tourist world there, rather than try and fight the bouncer, just go to the tourist police and they'll get your money back here. Otherwise, you end up with no this show. Yeah, you don't fight one, you fight ten as well. Yes. Savage, isn't it? The Asian face is something we don't really understand in this country. Well, as my friend said to me once, just because the lion shows his teeth, don't think he's smiling. Oh yeah, exactly. Not quite like that one. Yeah, the Thai smile means many things, but not necessarily happiness. Yes, it can hide a grievance that will last a lifetime, can't it? Yeah, no, it's a funny place, the whirlwind. But it's also funny because one of the lovable aspects of Thai culture is they're very accepting, aren't they? Yeah, it's such a lovely country, but you scratch that surface and it's very different underneath. I think if you go there on holiday, you come back loving it, but you live there for a little while and as long as you've not got complete shit in your eyes, you can kind of see the underbelly come through relatively quickly. Hong Kong's like that. I've met so many, or spoken to so many expats that have read my memoir, Eating Smoke, and they're like, they say, I never saw a triad when I was in Hong Kong. I'm like, you walk through one chai, that's a triad there, that's a triad there, that guy on that standing on the club door. It's funny how you can get under the skin or something, and it's a completely different experience. Yeah, definitely. It's a funny, funny, funny yes, everyone. No, no, no. What made you join the Royal Signals? You know, I was in the TA before in the Royal Anglians, and I really did want to join the infantry, but I'd just done four years at college doing an engineering BTEC, and I just thought, I didn't do all that. And I worked quite hard to pass it as well and, you know, use the technical background, obviously with a view to getting out of the army with a trade as well. I mean, that was the main thing, but you know, we'll ended up on the circuit on the team carrying guns, so maybe I should have joined the infantry in the first place. Right. And can you clear something up for us? The two corporals that were executed in Belfast. Gosh, you have to keep apologising. I forget their names. Do you remember their names? No, I don't know their names. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, so anyway, somebody will put it in the comments, but that happened the summer that I served in Belfast, so we were literally about to deploy. Yeah. And for our friends listening that don't know what we're talking about too, it was alleged that these two gentlemen were signalers, right? So, squaddies, but they were royal signals or some such thing, and that they'd driven into an IRA funeral accidentally when they were undercover. So, the new guy, the guy that was about to leave Belfast was showing the new guy around and learned that they drove into an IRA funeral cortege. The mourners at the funeral quickly realised these guys ain't with us, so they surrounded the car and cut long story short. They drank these two unfortunate men out and executed them and it was all filmed by an army or a police helicopter. It was absolutely awful. The name Howes is coming into my head, Corporal Howes, but again, I might be wrong there. Yeah. But why don't we want to ask you a theme, because it happened earlier. Yeah, sorry. No, I just wanted, what I wanted to ask you Richie was, they always said they were six, but then people are telling me no, they were 14 in, so they were intelligence. No, what it was, we had a unit called Jakuni Joint Communications Unit Northern Ireland, and it was just a posting. I mean, it was, you did wear civilian clothes, but it wasn't, I mean, there were some ops over there, like Ajax and Hawker and things like that. You know these? I believe that they weren't porting in, so they were Jakuni, as far as I know, signalers, just doing their handover, and I'm not sure, but maybe there might have been an element of big timing a bit on the part of the guy going out on his bravery at where he went, maybe, you know what I mean? He shouldn't have pushed his luck that much, and maybe I hate to say this sort of thing, there could have been an element of big timing when he was doing his driving the guy around, you know? Maybe it wasn't, it was just pure bad luck, you know? I just googled their names, you'll have to excuse me, but it's only polite. Derek Wood and David House killed on the 19th of March, so literally three months before we deployed, and yeah, there's that thing, isn't there? You've done the security job in the Middle East, and it's so easy to get laxadaisical and fall into a routine and get cocky. Yeah, very much so, like, you know, like we was in Basra and sometimes you go to Lille, which was on MSR temples, like two hours away, or if you went across the desert, it was three and a half hours, obviously across the desert is completely safe, because there's no IEDs in the desert, but on Tampa, that's where they all are, and you might get, right, I'll be back in two hours, I'll be back in three and a half, then you'll be like, sorry, let's just push and get back, you know, so you get things like that happen, but I mean complacency does sit in a little bit when you're doing something for so long. Yeah, I mean, the other thing as well I remember in Belfast, it was really exciting to go out, and the second company that I served with over there, because I started with one company, and then we got attached to another company, my team, and the beauty of that was this company, so it's Lima Company 4-2 Commando for people listening, is they only did very short patrols, whereas M Company, who I was with, did really long all-day patrols, 12 hours, they were utterly exhausted in one of the hottest summers I think we'd had for years, and with Lima Company, you literally just sort of like ran out the gate and you're out for two hours, two and a half hours, maybe four at the most, so it was a nice short thing to be on, you got to use all your sort of, all your skills, so stopping the players, searching, doing your five meter checks, to check there's no IED, wherever you stop, all this sort of stuff, but towards the end of the tour, it's almost like you want to go out and patrol more, because it was fun, you know, it was fun, and I guess with that fun element, it's easy to overlook the severity of the actual situation you're really in. Yeah, it really is, and I mean, the main thing we had in battle was the IDF, the IDF was really, really heavy at points, because it sheared down there, we didn't really have to worry about suicide bombers, because you know, Martin's more a sunny thing, so on, I mean, the army, they were getting hammered, you know, they really were, that when the Bricks were there, they were having a bad time, they really were, but for private security, we was relatively getting away with it, compared to like places like Fallujah or Baghdad or Mosul, certainly the convoys as well, you know, those convoy guys, they just used to get hit all day long, but we were relatively okay in Basra, and because my team was like a recce stroke liaison team as well, so we didn't actually carry clients, so we could do things slightly different as well. My friend Brad was executed, shot dead in Mosul, I don't know, I don't know if it was your time, he is with a group called Olive Security. I know Olive, I worked for Olive for a couple of months in 2015 actually. Yeah, that was a bit of a shocker, but it's the nature of the job, isn't it really, that's why the money was so good. Yeah, you didn't know the thing is we had some people taken, and at one point you didn't know, there was lots of people wearing police uniforms, but I was talking to a guy who was a policeman with G4S, and they were doing the police training out there, and I think it might have been Armour Group they were at that point, but they were doing the police training, and I think they were told they're not putting enough people out, and they said, what do you want, quality or quantity, and they were told quantity, so they opened the doors, and then you just let in a ton of militia just got into the police, so you go along, you'd see a police checkpoint there, but you didn't know if they were police or not, and a lot of the time, like for some people, by the time things got to a point where they knew something were wrong, they were very up close and personal with each other, you're about five meters away from a truck with a PKM on it or something like that, I think that's the problem. What's the PKM? You know, like the belt fed soviet, soviet weapon, I guess like our GPMG. All right, not quite 50 cow then, but... No, no, 762 I think, yeah, you know, like... What weapons did you use over there? We had M4 Glocks, and we had Minamis as well, so I mean, we was an American contract, you know, it was a DO Department of Defense contract, it was cost plus, you know, so we had really, really good kit, I mean, it was the reconstruction contract, so you know, that contract had a lot of money on it, and we got a lot of good kit, but we didn't have ECM, and when we used to tell the Army that we didn't have ECM, they used to say, well they'd be scared to go out without it, but I don't know, I think you just get used to it, you know. I mean, I remember when I was on TELIC on the original Invasion of Iraq with the Army, we had Soskin Land Rovers, and I just had two sandbags in the footwell that was supposed to be mine protection, I mean, I'm not sure how much used two sandbags are, but hey, you put them in there because it's got to be better than nothing, but... So ECM, electronic countermeasures, again, for the uninitiated, it's just an electronic pack you carry that it sends out a signal that interrupts the signal that the bomber is sending when he's detonating his device by a mobile phone or a radio control pack or something like this. We carry ECM in Northern Ireland, is it effective? Yeah, yeah, it is, I mean, obviously it won't stop command wire, but I think if it's got a wider wider range of frequencies, it should, I mean, it should work, you know, it's operating on that, say a mobile phone, a mobile phone signal operates in a certain spectrum, and if you can block that spectrum, you can block all mobile phones, you know. We had, this was an embarrassing moment for the chat, we had an SPS captain sat in our unit briefing, so it was the whole of 4.2 command, they were being briefed by the CO before we went over to Belfast, and one speaker, I think they had a speaker up to talk all about ECM equipment, right, so a guy from a regiment that had just returned something like this, and he did this whole lecture on ECM equipment, and then right at the end of it he said any questions, and this SPS captain put his hand up and said, yes, in the recent command wire incident with private so-and-so, why didn't the ECM protect him, and the whole room just went, the whole room went, oh no, so again, it was a bit of a moment, so what, you must have seen some incidents over there, can we call them incidents? To be honest, I got away with quite a lot, I mean the one contact my team was in, my team was in two contacts, one happened when I was on leave, and the second one happened about two weeks after I actually left the contract, so as myself actually, we didn't actually, we were very lucky, you know, but a lot of that come with the risk mitigating as well, so I mean the main thing was this, I mean the IDF, I mean, I didn't really come face-to-face with some contact that finished with a big trauma situation. Can you just explain our IDF, so we're in direct fire, so the militia or whoever would set up their mortars, put a timer on it, and then leave it, and then whatever time it would go off, but one thing that was never reported, a lot of the people that put the mortars down and put the IEDs down, they weren't actually militia, you know, I don't know why this has never come out, but you've just basically got normal people, and they're trying to earn a few quid, you know, I think an IED at the time, so like in 2006 this would have been, it was like $200 for an IED, there was a thing called EFP, which was explosive form projectile, now that was an IED that had a copper plate on top of it, and this was a bit of a step up, because when that blast, it would turn to copper plate molten, and then that would just go for anything, like a knife through butter, so that was worth a thousand if you could get one of these EFPs. If you could get a hit on someone, you'd get paid money, if you got a hit and killed someone, you got paid money, if you got a hit, killed someone and filmed it, I think the militia will pay you like $2,000 or something, so potentially an Iraqi could get an IED for $200 and potentially make two grand off of it, or if he had a bit more money in EFP and then you could guarantee the success and the money that comes with it, so there was a lot of the same, I'm not sure what the pricing was for the mortar team, but it's just like everything, you've got some hard up young whatever in the area, I don't think it's too hard to get young disillusioned people who are poor, extremely poor, to do stupid things, to make some money quickly, you know, like, I mean let's face it, I dare say there's a lot of people in our army that don't really care about the politics of it, they just want to be in the army. Well I don't think they understand the politics of it, if that's how the army's able to recruit, isn't it? If you had to be faulty by the time you joined up, people would be like, fuck that shit, I ain't working for George Bush, I ain't going to make Tony Blair and you know his next billion, yes. Yeah, but you know we've been making rich people money with war since the Crusades and before, so I think that, you know, I mean that was the thing we've got in Iraq in 2003, I mean let's face it, we all thought there was weapons of mass destruction, I mean we was given the nerve agent tablets and the bacterial agent tablets, we got offered if we wanted that for Amphrax jabs, which I quite politely declined, you know, but we didn't have to have them, some units, they made their guys have all these jabs, but when we went out there we thought the threat was real, you know, we were going there to liberate, obviously oil was, we always know that's the bottom line, but then when you go out there and it's like yeah and you hear that the G2, the intelligence brief was sexed up a bit, it's like yeah we went there just for oil, but I'm not, every war ever fought has been over territory and money, you know, what the bloke on the ground fought and what the powers that they actually know have always been two different things, so there's nothing to do there. It's very brave that you say this Richie because it's what young people need to hear, but I'm always saying is this, yes the dichotomy, if that's the right word, or the challenge that young people face now, is that for example the Royal Marines is just, it's quite a good job to do for a few years, you know, at least to get the berry and then do one tour or go on a jolly to the Caribbean, I mean it's like nothing you could ever explain to your civilian counterpart, but of course you're doing the job that you just described, you're making the sociopaths even richer than they already are on their next phony, you know, phony invasion, but of course the alternative is to stay in Civvie Street and you can see why I get a lot of young people right to me, Chris, I know it's a whole load of horseshit, but I've just set my heart on joining up and what can you say, you know, what can you say because I've worked in I've worked in offices, the directors are complete cock, all the managers are shallow cowardly cocks, none of them could organize a picnic if you paid them a million pounds, in fact you won't want to go on a picnic with these, this culture develops a certain type of people that get to the top and they're not, in my opinion, and I can obviously only talk about the situations I've been in, not not every single company, but I would just call them a bit useless with very limited life experience and this is the challenge you face if you want to join the forces, isn't it, you know, you've got on the one hand you'll defect, you're fighting for evil, on the other hand to stay in Civvie Street you're working with idiots, not all, not everyone's idiots, but people, you know, hopefully they get what I'm trying to say, you know, at the end of a year in a civilian job, you know, what have you achieved, you might have been to Ibiza for two weeks and got pissed every Friday, Saturday, hangover Sunday, maybe you like mountain biking or something, it's just chucking it out there, to be honest, folks, make of it what you will, it's a conundrum, even if you're working, you know, even in Civvie Street though, you still make your money for conglomerates, so one way or another, you know, if someone's making money, I mean even if you're not in the army and you're in your bank manager, you're still making money for the bank and everyone involved in that, so you're all, you know, no matter what you do, unless you're going to be, I don't know, a small-level entrepreneur or something, managing your own money, I mean, you're always making money for that bigger player. Yeah. I'll be honest, I'm completely comfortable with it, Chris, you know, I've done a lot of study into history, I've got a, I like to think I've got a pretty good understanding of world history and, you know, control and all that, it's nothing new, I mean, we've always been controlled in one way or another, I mean, even in a family unit you're controlled, your older sibling is more powered in you, you know, parents have more control than the kids, that's a control system, you know, everything's a control system, there's nothing, you can see them all, you know, there's nothing hidden in it, if you open your eyes and look like people say they're controlling us, of course they are, it's always been that way, there is no other way it could be, because that's what we do as animals, like, it's just how we are, and as I say, I don't worry about it, you know, when it comes to the army and the rights and wrongs of joining it, well, everyone's got blood on their hands, but you know, the British empire, every empire to ever exist, we're the only one that give up our territory at the end of the quill, rather than a bloody banning, because every other empire fell through a war, or they got beaten, Napoleon, at the end of Napoleon it was that finishes empire, the Ottomans, they lost theirs at the end of the First World War because they picked the wrong side, ours after the Second World War and stopping someone else having an empire, maybe we couldn't quite conscientiously keep people at fight for someone we just stopped through in the same thing, you know, so empires have their place and maybe at the moment they're just out of date now, you know? Yes, yes, it's fascinating, history's fascinating, I don't really want to get into this, but the more you learn about it, the more you realise that there's two histories, there's the one that you're taught and then there's probably what really happened. Yeah, mind you, everyone's got fires, I mean they say history is written by the victor, if it was written by the loser, I don't think it would be any less biased, you know, so it is what it is and I try and sort of watch multiple sources on the same thing and then you know if there's five facts that go across you can probably say they're true and then everything else is just speculation based on what that historian thinks, you know, so you don't understand the world today if you don't know your history, I think. No, it becomes interesting when you, like the other day I was talking about Pearl Harbor and if you take the official narrative that there's the, you know, let's talk in literary terms, the poor Americans there with their fleet in the Pacific out of the blue get attacked by this savage enemy with their war cry, Banzai and, you know, and then the good old Uncle Sam came in to help poor little England and did it, you know, that all just sounds like a great bloody story, doesn't it? But then when you hear that actually no, they charged us money to come into that war and that we only paid that debt off, it was like in the last 10 years. Yeah, it was in the last 20 years we've been paying that debt to the Americans and then you learn of the trade disagreements between America and Japan and the sanctions that were being put in place and all this kind of thing and then someone comes out and says, actually they heard the radio communications of the Japanese bombers as they came in so they could have, you know, they could have alerted the fleet but they chose not to and I'm not saying which of this is true and what's not, I'm just saying that there's always two stories, aren't there? Yeah, there is and I think that's it, I mean that was it, I think Japan have been bankrupted, they had embargoes on them, they needed to invade China to get rubber and tin and stuff like that but they knew the moment they did that America would swoop in so they had to remove, from my understanding anyway, so they had to remove that fleet so they could get onto China and start, I think that's it, they were an animal in a corner that was desperate and a cornered animal will always do desperate things so you know when you've got embargoes on you, then you're going under rapidly, then you need to go somewhere and get resources, what are you going to do like, you know? Yeah, they were kind of forced into a corner, yeah. Richie, before we talk about your monumental achievement in climbing Mount Everest, can we just talk a bit about Thailand because you mentioned, you know, there's a few things happening, lots of things happen in Thailand, a lot of Westerners die or end up in prison over there. Yeah, right, yeah. So David McMillan who I spoke to the other day, friends if you're watching, watch the Dave McMillan podcast, he was sentenced to death in Thailand and he cut through the bars of his cell and escaped, right, which you know, as you would, but we also had a couple of marines that were surfing on top of a train in Thailand and it went under a tunnel and they lost their lives. My friend's father was on a float in one of these festivals that the Thais have and he fell off, banged his head and he died, that was last year and yeah, you get this situation where there's an awful lot of stuff happens in Thailand and a lot of it's quite serious. You also, Richie, you get a certain type of expat, do you get what I'm saying? You get, I'm talking about the blokes here in particular, but you get these kind of wanderers that have done, you know, you just get a certain type of person, is this making sense or do I need to try and explain a bit more? No, I know, spies, lies and mercenaries or something like that, you know, I think there's a bit of all the different sorts of weird and wonderful, some are telling the truth, some are for the shit and yes, everything in this world. And then you get your football shirts, as I think of them, they're your England shirts that probably never been abroad much in their life, but they go to Thailand, love it, there's all these beautiful women that, you know, appear to love them and they make a home for themselves there and it becomes like their little England, but in Thailand or you can say the same for Hong Kong and they get fiercely protective of their, you know, their narrative. I mean, I've had people ask me, why did you write a book about Hong Kong? You only lived there a year and I say, well, that's the year that I wrote about, right? They genuinely get really, really upset that I've lived there 20 years, I haven't written a book, not my fucking problem. Interesting mix of people, isn't it? Yeah, I lived in a few places, I was on Cotow for quite a while, bouncing between work and Cotow, very much a backpacker scene there, very much sort of, yeah, just all the backpackers and that's very different to the mainland, you know, like Cotow was kind of its own thing is to say, everyone goes there to die and it's all backpackers or trap packers, as we call them, just drop there and I, you know, and then I was in Pattier for a couple of years and obviously, Pats is where the main sort of core of all that sort of stuff is and then my last few years, I was living in Phuket in southern Phuket and that was a different scene as well because there was actually like expat girls over there, like all, and I sort of moved to Phuket to get away from the Pattier scene a bit, like all my friends were ex-militarium from the job and all that and it was nice to go to Phuket and get away from that, you know, because it was just mental in Phuket, it's just everyone's hard on it. I mean, I used to do eight weeks, no, 12 weeks at work, for four weeks I was just in the bottom of a bottle, then you go back to work because it's dry as well, so you're just hammering it on leave, then you go to work, you dry off and then there's people, I think if not for the job, giving them that time to dry out from whatever they're doing, then more people will be dead because I think the problem is a lot of people discovering drugs, like they get on the circuit, they get to Asia and when they discover drugs for the first time, they can afford it as well rather than being like a young person who gets into drugs, you can't really afford it and maybe that in itself stops the addiction, but when you're getting paid a lot of money and you find it and you think, oh, this is what everyone's on about and you can afford it, you know, and that that leads to a bad place for a lot of likes, like, you know, it really does, and yeah, we've had a few. It's so careful buying and taking your drugs in Thailand as well because it, well, there is a death sentence there for a reason, at the very minimum, all the police are fairly corrupt and if they even sniff that you might have just bought something, they're on you. If not to go take you to the cash point and empty your bank account, if you can't give them that money, then you're in a Thai prison awaiting what can be a lengthy sentence. And some of the bars or the motorbike taxi guys are opposite and they know what goes on in certain bars and as soon as you leave they're on the phone. I mean, I know one guy and he was seeing this girl, this wasn't the police, but he was seeing this girl anyway, he broke up with her and as he was flying back to work, he was in a hotel in Dubai going through his bag, she'd put a bag of ice in his bag, you know, that was like revenge trying to get him, so he's gone through Bangkok airport with that, Dubai airport with that, luckily it hadn't been found, but it's like that's revenge, isn't it? You know, you get me banged up, can't be nice because I'll finish my relationship with you. It's absolutely crazy over there, you know, it's just and I told someone about that and she was like, well, maybe she loved her too much, loved him too much, you know, like really? You get him in jail for 20 years because she loved him too much, she's crazy. Yeah, I've been at the full moon party on Kopan Yang and we stayed on, oh, what's the other island that's near Kopan Yang? Kosamui. Kosamui, yeah, staying on Kosamui at the time and the night of the full moon party before all the speed boats come to pick you up, which is just a bloody exciting thing again, especially if it's a choppy sea, it was quite that was quite an experience, but the manager of our backpacker who was a Swiss guy spoke Thai fluently because he'd been there so long. He went round the tape every table in a restaurant that evening saying full moon party. Yeah, he did right. Take your drugs here before you go. Do not take anything with you to Kopan Yang, right? And then when you're at the full moon party, you see why the undercover Thai police have got Westerners on the beach and that you can see them. They're stripping the Westerners down, going through all their pockets, looking for anything, even a little bit of smoke just to be able to arrest them and then take them to the cash point or your holiday can turn pretty bloody. I heard the guys with the, you know, they have the skipping rope that's on fire. I heard that those guys have a bit of a deal with the local health centre, that they dump it on every X amount of people, they get burned after pay them and they get kicked back from it. I don't know if that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me, you know, it's one of those things. That's amazing because I'm reading, as we speak, I'm reading Colin O'Brady's book. He was the guy that was the first to ski across Antarctica, the same time as my friend Captain Lou Rudd, SAS, they both did it at the same time and Colin O'Brady had the burnt skipping rope thing in Thailand. Oh really? But it put him in a wheelchair for X amount of months, if not years. He couldn't walk, he was that badly burned up by it. Went on to ski across Antarctica, so there's a lesson for all of us, live your dreams. Richie, have you heard of Misty's Bar in Pattaya? Misty's, no, maybe, you know, it doesn't ring a bell, I'll be honest. Okay, that's a very old friend of mine that owns that one. Yes, and have you come across a lot of Westerners getting killed over in Thailand? Yeah, we've had suicide overdose and one of our friends just died, just accidentally, don't know what was going on if there's PTSD involved or I don't know, I mean, but there's a saying, it's one of the guys that hung himself, I mean, it's the old story, why didn't anyone, why didn't he say anything to anyone? You know, I mean, I'm not very funny, but for the craziness that Thailand is, there's a lot of us over there and there's a huge support system over there, you know, and it's really sad that someone was clearly, even though all the blokes were there and all your lifelong friends, so a lot of core guys, they were all together, I mean, for me, there was no no X6 guys over there, you know, so I didn't have a history just from the job, but he was there, he's got history with these guys, he was in the core with them, he's working with them, but still he was lonely enough that that wasn't enough, you know, and I think maybe ICE is involved as well at some point, and we had another guy, and I don't know, apparently he was getting really paranoid about things like, I don't know, just really mad paranoid and he's like gone out of a window and you know, a lot of those rooms, they're like that thin, you know, just it looks solid, but it's not, and as he's come out of the window, he's just fell about, I don't know, like 10 meters onto a concrete floor, and obviously Thailand, being Thailand, they've got pictures of him on the bloody TV and the newspaper and that because they don't shy away from the graphic photo, do they over there? In Hong Kong, they used to put the pictures of the shark attacks on the front page of the blooming papers, so some poor guy getting dragged out the sea with no legs, that's what you saw on the front of the paper. Yeah, there's like no holds barred there, they really, yeah, no, as I say, it's like that, I mean, with the deaths and that over there, I mean, it's just that whirlwind. They say, you know, it draws you in and spits you out broken. Just one question before we move on to the mountains, and for anybody listening and for our wonderful YouTube, we are not promoting the use of substances here whatsoever. This is purely educational, but a lot of people get confused about what ice is when I speak to them, and I explain what it was in Hong Kong, right? Right. Very quickly, so you get your party speed, which you buy in a club in the UK, and it's basically Sherba, it's glucose, 95% glucose and 5% amphetamine sulfate, and it gives you a bit of a high for five or six hours, maybe a bit longer. Then you get methamphetamine, which is commonly referred to in the UK's base. It's a slightly different chemical composition, I believe, I don't know, but it's like about 30 times stronger than the party stuff, right? Is that the same as Yabba? What they call Yabba? Yeah, Yabba, the little red pill that you get in Asia, so it's made predominantly in Burma, but you can buy it in Cambodia. You don't get it in Hong Kong, but I'll explain why, because you get ice in Hong Kong, and it's a little pill. I'm not going to say how you take it, because I don't want to sound like I'm promoting it, but that's methamphetamine, because that's a very strong form of amphetamine. Ice is methamphetamine purified to crystal form, so it is literally just the base amphetamine, meth amphetamine, with no adulterants, no it's not cut, and the reason it's called ice is it looks like rock salt, it's these little crystals, and one of those crystals is enough to keep you up for 48 hours, right? And let's say you spent ten dollars or ten quid, ten euros, like I say, there's probably about ten crystals in it, so it's really, really strong stuff. You don't crash on it like you do with other stuff, because you can just keep taking it, and ding, you stay, even after seven, eight, nine days, you stay at that level of awareness and focus. The trouble is the mental health issue comes in then, your brain just starts to get overloaded with tiredness and chemicals, and that's when you start to see people climbing up lampposts and doing what I did, which was try to crawl across a cable between two skyscrapers, right? What I wanted to ask, Richie, is the ice you saw in Thailand, was it this crystal stuff? I did, do you know what? I've never actually seen it, I knew that guys were using it and that, but I'll be honest, when I watched the podcast with you, I think yesterday, and how you just explained it, that's the first, I didn't know how the difference between meth, ice, I didn't actually know what the difference was before yesterday, I just knew that ice was really bad and some of my friends were in a bad place and died from it, and meth, you know what I mean? So I didn't actually see it with my own eyes, I'll be honest with you. Another thing, again, I'll just say this from a point of safety for our travellers that are listening, in Asia, if you ask for the white stuff, which can be few and far between, the locals will bring you heroin, right? You've got to be aware of it. He's a really good guy, really, he was a legend, and he went to, he was doing a course, and he went to Laos just to do like a visa run, and this guy was an absolute legend, he was loved, absolutely loved, and the next morning, he's done his visa run, they've knocked on the door, him and the guy in his room were both dead, and we think it was that, they think it was Coke, but it wasn't, it was, and the thing is, this guy, he was not mad on it, he was, you know, had his stuff together more than a lot of loads, it was just really, really bad, you know. They give you pure China white, which costs nothing in Asia, right? Pure heroin, and of course you think it's Charlie, you do a big fat line and bang, your body just stops work, you stop breathing, you go unconscious, your respiration ceases to function, and you die in your sleep basically, or die unconscious. Again, folks, if you're listening, lived a good life, you don't need any of that shit, the answers are all, the answers are all in here, talking to the white stuff, let's go to the mountains, yeah, the good white stuff, the snow, yeah, what's, how the hell did you embark on that career? Yeah, so that's, as I was saying before, I was, when I went to Kilimanjaro, flew up that, and I thought, you know, Everest is only three kms more, thinking about it, and then you realise it's actually, Martial at the time, he was an ex-paramedic, but he was also ex-2-3, so he'd achieved some things in his life, and I said to him, I said, I know it sounds really stupid, but I'm thinking about Everest, and he went, if you're going to dream, dream big, and then another guy, I was in the gym, and as I walked out the gym, this bloat sparked a cigarette up, and I went, you take your cigarettes to the gym, and he went, if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly, and these two phrases really stuck with me, and then I just started researching it, finding out what I needed to do, you know, and I started off, I did a two-week mountaineering course in Chamonix, followed by Mont Blanc, then I went to Denali, which is just below 7,000 metres in Alaska, and that's a lot, was like an expedition, and you've got a big pack, and you've got a full sledges, and all stuff like that, and then I went to Choyu in Tibet, which is an 8,000er, to get experience with using oxygen, and then as part of my beat-up training for the fitness, I went to Akan Kagawa, so 7,000 metres of trekking peak, that was more for the fitness build-up, so when I went to Everest, I was ready, you know, I could be quite self-sufficient as much as I could be, I was strong and I was fit, because I had to actually go up twice, I got two hours from the summit, and turned around and went back up six days later in the summit, because the first time we went up, it was that year in 2012 that had the really mad queue, there was a really famous photo, and there was a lot of people there, so I mean this is the thing with the queues, everyone talks to each other, like there's no surprise, all the teams, what day are you going for, because the weather windows, people know the dates of the weather windows, so the summit can happen, so everyone knows what date they're going for, we intentionally went for the later date, so there'd be fewer people, and we were lucky, because if we got up the night before, our camp three got taken out by an avalanche, like all our tents got taken out, the only thing that wasn't taken out was our tempered the oxygen, now if that had been taken out as well, we wouldn't have gone up there, and obviously if we'd been up there the next day, we would have all been in the avalanche and what would have happened to us, so that was quite lucky, and then when we went up there, you know what, I think seven people died that night on the first summit, maybe it was four, I don't know, it was mental, like I remember I was in the South Pole, and I think this is the last time I ever muttered something religious, and I'm standing there and it was these two sherpas, they'd just come down from the summit and they just had ice, you know, they were just covered in ice all over them, and I remember looking at my mate, and I went, and you know what, I go, I'm not religious, I go, but God protect us tonight, and my mate went, yeah, I'll take that, and literally it was, because our summit day, there was a storm due to coming by 10.30 in the morning, but you should be summit in it, you leave at say eight, nine o'clock at night, you should be on the summit about five in the morning, you should be down at South Cold by 10, you know, maybe even pushing the camp three, but this storm come in like 12 hours early, and because there was so many people waiting for the summit, they all got caught up there, and then what happens is they just wait, and when you run out of oxygen, those high altitude illnesses, they start to come on very quickly, so, and this is the thing, a lot of people, they decide the summit is worth more than their life, you know, I mean, these people that die up high, it's a strange thing to talk about, but a lot of them, they kind of, it's hard to talk about because they've kind of put themselves in that position, like the inexperienced people, they weren't up there on their own, you know, they had, most of them probably had a sherpa next to them saying, you need to go down, you know, but the problem is, it's an expensive job, I know someone who relinquished their house, and that was the year of the sherpa strike, so they didn't even get on the mountain because the sherpa strike happened, so that's a lot of money, if you're sponsored, that can be hours and hours on my telephone and getting that sponsorship, the two months of work, that's not an easy thing to get, you know, so when you've got the cost, the time of work in everything, I think that's why people go all out and because they don't think, oh, if the sum is bad, I'll just go up in a few more days, I don't know why they don't, maybe they're not strong enough, I don't know, but the company's almost push it like, you've got that one shot and that's it, you know, I don't see why, if the shot fails, hey, go down, rest, try again, I don't know why people don't push that, it's just an all-or-nothing, you've got one shot and that's it, you know, and I think maybe people went there with a bit of a mentality of, because I'll be honest, like, I've been on about 9,000, 8,000 meter expeditions and only summited for, like, I actually go there expecting not to summit, you know, because there's a lot, like, you know, people in the military, oh, you'll smash it, you'll do it, it's not really like that, you know, the mountain besides, if you're going to get up there or not, you know, and someone said, you don't conquer a mountain, you get up when it's not looking and hopefully you get back down before even notice you were there, and I really like that saying, you know, it allows you to summit, you don't summit, it'll let you, because when the mountain shows its teeth, it's not good. So what kind of expedition were you on? Were you on one of these kind of guerrilla things where you just grabbed, partnered up with a Sherpa, paid for your license and climbed, or were you in an organised team? No, well, what I've done, you've got many levels, so you've got the high-roller companies that are charging, they're charging maybe 70,000, something like this, and you get a lot with that, and one thing you get, you'll get a Western guide, so for three people, there'll be one guide with them, so if you've got a team of 12, you're at four Western guides taking them all up, and that's fine, if that's a good level of safety, you know, that's very good, but there's a lot of people now, you can just go make, and you can have a Sherpa with you, but the Sherpa, you won't actually see until summit though, you know, because you don't actually need to be moving with a Sherpa lower down on the mountain, like you really don't, like they sort of move tents and stuff up the hill, and then you can do what you want, I mean, I've, most times I've moved through the icefall, I've been on my own, you know, it's only on that summit day, because it's on the summit day where the trouble happens, you know, if ever there's fatalities, it's more likely to be up there, if outside of that, it will probably be avalanches or something that happens in the Cumberwise Fall, you know, but it's that summit day where all the trouble, that's when everyone's sort of nervous, because you know, as I say, things go wrong, above 8,000 meters, you really feel like you're stepping into another game, like summit days are really, because 12 hours, that's a short day, you know, I've done a climb once, I've climbed like 25 hours, you know, and that was having done 12 hours today before, 14 hours today, you know what I mean, it's big, big, big, long, long, lots of time, you know, and you've got to be fit for it, and then you can get away with it, I mean, my friend said the best training for Everest is go to somewhere like Wales, get as drunk as you can, then the next day put weight on and go over the hills for 10 hours, and that'll give you some idea of how bad you'll feel, you know, because you just don't feel good up there, you just feel crap, and you're going to do the most physically demanding thing, if you like, in a physically depleted state from the get-go, because you know, just being up at altitude, we're not evolved to be above four, four and a half thousand meters long term, you know, so when you're at five, four, whatever the base camp is, you're just degrading and degrading and degrading, you're not getting stronger at the being there, you're just acclimatizing, you know, like, you've read love cell response, that's adapting, but your muscle tone's going down, you know, you're losing weight, so on one side you're adapting, and on the other side you're just degrading, you know. Gosh, and so going back to the team team thing, how many were you with? There was, I think there was 12, 12 of us, all from different parts, there was Dutch, there was two Canadian, there was an Australian, oh god, multi-national team. Bad luck. Yeah, and that's really good, you know, like, you get, and because we went with a bit of a cheaper company as well, people aren't so, they're okay, I mean, I was on the mountain once, and you've got like the CEO of Under Armour, you know, on one of the teams, I mean, don't get me wrong, I think he's a nice bloke, but I don't think I'd want to be on a team where you've got people like that around you, you know, that's a little bit too, I don't know, I'd rather have someone a bit more closer to me that I can get on with, you know. Yeah, of course. Right. And I asked Nims this, so Nims Die for anyone, for friends watching, if you haven't watched my podcast with Nims Die, who summited the world's 14 highest mountains in six months, knocking seven and a half years off the record, so he's a girker that joined the SBS, which is fascinating in itself. Please go and watch that podcast because, yeah, you can get a lot from Nims' story, but I've got this bit of a fantasy, Richie, because a lot of things I do, I just go and do them, and I cut through the planning, and I cut through the worrying, and the stress, and this, and the training, and I just go and do it, and I'm not suggesting that's always the best way. Yeah. And I'm not naive, I've read every book I can on Everest, I've watched every documentary, I've watched all the National Geographic stuff, right. I would expect to see dead bodies littering the mountain, it wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't, you see some of these climbers, they see a dead body and they piss their pants, and you think, what did you expect to see at the top of Everest? It's a very dangerous place, right. But alongside that, say again, mate. There's a lot up there as well. Yeah. Don't see me in the car, but when you come down in the day, you saw, oh, oh, oh, they're all over the place. Yeah. But putting that to one side, there's always, you know, there's a part of me that I wonder how you'd fare if it was your absolute dream to summit Everest, and you just literally rocked up there. I don't know how you get the permit, but obviously you got your permit. I'm guessing some people don't even get that. And could you just partner up with a Sherpa? Could you haul your own kit? Do people, for example, use other people's tents and just think, well, look, there's going to be loads of tents up there. We'll just crush in one to save us carrying. How does it all work? Yeah. Well, that, now we've got a thing that happens on the mountain called slipstreaming. Now, when you go up a mountain, you can go base camp only, which is you've got base camp, but then on the mountain, you're doing your own thing. And that's how people climb big mountains for a lot cheaper. They don't move with the Sherpa or anything. They're on their own, but they do what you do, what you said. They find tents, their stories of people getting in and just with their crampons still on, just getting into sleeping bags. And, you know, because people are so tired, they just don't care, you know. So I mean, we've had situations where we've got to a camp, we've got in our tent and there's someone in there. You know, like we've had situations, like when I was climbing Lotsie in 2016, I was waiting to sort of go up and someone's tried to come in my tent and I said, no, you can't come in my tent anyway. No one let him in. And I thought, and I could hear him outside and I thought, right, I'm not going to sit here and listen to this blow, die. And I went, and I knew what he was doing. I knew he was slipstreaming. You know, so I said, right, mate, I go, I'm not going to go to the summit tonight. I go, I'm going to save your life or I'm getting the tent and shut the fuck up. You know, I was really, really pissed off with him. Anyway, I didn't go to the summit that night. I kicked him out. And then he wasn't even climbing Lotsie. He got out the tent and then started walking down the hill to go to the North Colt so he could climb Everest. Because when you climb Lotsie, Camp 4 is on the way to the South Colt for Everest Camp 4. There are, I'm going to say, mountain, you know. So the route is 85% the same. You're just above the yellow band. You do a slight movement if you're going to Lotsie Peak. So this blow could come up. I've blown out my summit attempt to let him come in. And basically all that had happened, he got too tired, couldn't make it to the South Colt and thought he'd try his luck with Lotsie Camp 4 and try and find an empty tent. So that's what happened. And then I kicked him out. I managed to summit steal. But I mean, these are the sort of things that happen, you know, I mean, I mean, there'll be other, none of the other people let him in their tent, you know, but I was literally, I could hear him outside, you know, and it's like, I can't sort of ignore this and get out and he's sitting there frozen to death the next day. No, I could have done something. Yeah, of course. You know, it's that kind of thing, the slipstreaming. That's a naughty thing that is, you know, I mean, you can do it and you can get away with it. You know, but it's dodgy. If you're coming down and you're knackered and there's no tent, and you ain't got the strength to go down lower, you've got a real problem. You know, and then that's the thing. The more money you pay, you get a good level of safety with that. So when you pay 70 grand, you've got that, that Western guy, you've got that shirt for some people have two shirts. You know, but when you cut corners and you slipstream when you go cheaper, you're sacrificing safety. Now, if you're a professional climber, yeah, you can do that. But if you're just just trying to cut corners, it's it's a messy game. So another question then. And I'm just putting this out there, folks. I'm not suggesting that this is a possibility. But take a guy like myself, right? That I've obviously been in the outdoors a reasonable amount. I've been up mountains, but I haven't, I wouldn't class myself as a mountaineer or even a climber. I've only ever like done it for fun. Yeah. What's to stop me rocking up at every space camp with my team, whatever, you know, what are the skills that I'm needing to learn? I mean, obviously, I can get a cooker on. Obviously, I can put a tent out or get into a sleeping bag. Obviously, I know about frostbite. Obviously, I know about, you know, managing your core temperature. I'm guessing it, you know, it doesn't look that difficult to clip onto a rope. Yeah. Crampons, I think, you know, you probably could look at them for five minutes and work out how these things need to be put on. If I'm going to fall down the slope, I'm going to fall on my ice axe, right? And stop myself sliding. And then, of course, you know, I feel like I'm aware enough to recognize mountain sickness in other peoples. So other than that, Richie, what's the learning process? Why is it you need to do four months training before you go? I'll be honest, the one thing that you can't get and another marine may ask me the same thing. You can turn up, yeah, and you can maybe summit, you know, and people do. But the thing is, what you won't know is how you, on an individual level, how your body behaves at altitude. Because you could be the fittest guy in the world, but you just may be crap at altitude. You know, like, I mean, I know a guy and he's like a 245 marathon guy. He weren't that strong in the mountains. That's the thing with it. How are you up high? You can be the fittest guy in the world, but for some reason, your body just isn't that good at triggering that red blood cell response for you. But this is why you do those other climbs. I mean, what they're trying to do in the pool now is say at least climb another 8,000 or a 6,000 or a 7,000. But yeah, as I say, I mean, yeah, you probably could pull up and get away with it. You know, if the weather's on side, you know, you get some good windows, there's no problems, you are climatised well. Yeah, it could all happen, but it's like mountaineering is like swimming the Atlantic. If rowing the Atlantic, if the weather gods are on your side, anything's possible. But when Mother Nature decides to have a hissy fit, that's when you need skills, knowledge, experience, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, but I think the main thing with the training is, is that altitude thing is just knowing what you're like at altitude. You know, how do you manage the sweating because you've got these bloody big, big eyed-a-down suits on, which I guess are brilliant when you're sat on the peak and it's bitterly cold. There's a 30 mile an hour wind sapping all the heat from your body. Great. You've got to climb up there in this suit. Are you not getting soaking wet and then freezing the moment you stop? No, I am the world's most sweatiest person and I've never had a problem with them because when you're up at that high, it's so cold. You're just not, you're just not that hot and you can't move fast enough to generate that kind of heat, Eva, because what you're doing is you're on that summit there, you've just got to keep evaluating. It's your hands and your feet, you know, and what a lot of people say, what I do, I sort of step and I step and I'm thinking if my feet get cold, I start crunching my toes. And then about 20 minutes later, my toes will probably be warm again. But if you just ignore it and forget about it and you've got 12 hours, then by the time you get your boots off, you've got 12 hours of frozen toes you ain't been thinking about. And that's what people do. They're not thinking, why my toes are cold? Why are they cold? What can I do about that? Like you're moving up the rope, this hand might be getting cold because it's above the heart. So step over the rope, use your left hand and start getting some feeling back into this. You know, don't just ignore it, be aware of yourself, what you're doing, how you're feeling, how you're moving, you know, and you know, little by little, you ship away. I'm guessing now that they have electric boot warmers and hand warmers, don't they? Yeah, some people use them. I've never used anything like that personally, you know, but they're there, you know, I mean, compared to what they used to have. I mean, apparently, like the stuff they used to have was actually quite effective. It just weighed a tonne because you was wearing like millions of layers of cotton clothes and stuff. What's it like, what's it, what's it like eating then in cooking? Do you have much of an appetite? Are you using like a an MSR multifuel stove or Yeah, yeah, you've just got, you know, epi gas is what we use and you just got your stove. I mean, one thing you can do is just put like, hang the stove and then you can put a candle underneath the gas. So if the flame's a little bit low, just that little bit of heat on the gas can just get the flame going a bit better. I mean, the cooking's fine, to be honest, it's just a pain in the ass getting the snow because, you know, you've got a bag like that and it gives you like that much water, you know, you need so much snow and I mean, the appetite, sometimes, like they say, if you was to eat like a 300 calorie meal, you probably, you won't get much from it because your body would use more energy to digest that from when you get from it. Because when you're above six, seven thousand meters, that's, that's not our evolution. You know, so all our digestion, I mean, above 8000 meters, they call it the death zone because you are actually starting to diet. So when you're above 7000 or close to it, like camp three, you're already, your physiology is already behaving differently, you know, and as I say, it's like, it's like doing a marathon back to back, day after day, week after week, two months or something, you know. But I mean, but then there's other people and they eat and they're fine and they fly up the mountain and it's quite subjective. But once again, the more you do it, the more you get used to it. Like I think the first time I went to base camp, I was like, oh my God, this is so high. Now I go to base camp and it's like, right, now the work begins, you know, get into base camp, that's the non plus bit. That's like, that shouldn't be a problem. That's, you know, you shouldn't be struggling, get into any base camp if you're there to climb an 8000 meter peak. And that, you know, that really used to long and short that, you know, so. And what's the actual, what's the actual climb like then, Richie, because I've, again, I'm not trying to compare myself to a mountain climbing, not in any way, shape or form, but I've had things where I was in South America, I went for a run one day was I in Aguas Caliente. I think that's what the place is called. It's basically the last village. Yeah, it's the last village you get at the bottom. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I've been there. So I was there staying there. I was, I was in a backpacker. I thought, right, I'm gonna go for a run. So I went out with my trainers on and I, I saw this little hill going up for, oh, challenge myself here. I run up this hill and it basically carved up the side of what I thought was a valley and it went up and up and I just kept running, which is weird because in the, when I was in the Marines, I found running really hard. Going up hill was just like, I felt like death. And yet this run, this run, I'm just, I'm running up and I'm running up and I didn't stop. Finally got to a ladder that was, it'd been like hammered into the rock face, a sheer rock face. So I climbed up this huge ladder, got out on some more rocks, kind of a bit like the old Tarzan films, the precipices used to see in the Tarzan films. So I just kept running and I ran and finally I came out on top of this peak and right above me was the huge Inca flag, so the rainbow flag. And I turned around, I was looking down on Machu Picchu. I was across the river, I don't know what I was on, but when I turned around, there was that legendary site of Machu Picchu down below me, right? It was one of the greatest, one of my greatest moments traveling was to, I hadn't paid any money, hadn't paid a tour guide, hadn't paid the 30 bucks to get into Machu Picchu, none of that. I've done it accidentally, ended up on top of this mountain looking down. And then when I, when I ran the length of the UK, and I'm carrying, you know, I'm carrying a hefty backpack, when I got to Hills, and I was tempted to start walking, it just became easier just to keep running. So I just keep running and I, one hill in Wales, I think it was 18 kilometers straight up and I just ran, I ran the whole way. It was just easier and more time economic to keep running, right? So when I think of Everest, I think wouldn't it be nice to get on the mountain and run and realise actually that you, you know, your, your body was quite good at this. Like Nim's was saying, Nim's was just a natural asset. He could almost run up, run up these mountains. So go into your experience. How did you find, did you ever have days where you were just like rocketing up? Or is it always hard work? I think, I mean, the higher you go, the harder it gets. I mean, you're first to climatisation. It could take you maybe five hours to get through the ice pool. And then once you're climatised, you only take you three hours, you know, but then you're still moving fast relevant to how you're feeling. You know, so I guess for me, it's like, if it takes five hours and I'm feeling crap, or if it takes three hours and I'm feeling crap, you're always moving at whatever is your ability to move that. And the thing with the ice pool is you're trying to race the sun, because obviously you try and go through in the middle of the night when it's frozen solid, you know, because the ice pool moves by like two metres a day or something. That's why the ice doctors have to go through in the morning and make sure the ladders are still there and all that. And as you're climbing up, you can see like the sun is coming up the bottom of the ice pool. And you know that once that sun's on the ice, it's going to get heat, it's going to get hot and it's going to expand very quickly. And maybe things will start moving near you that you don't want moving near you. Like you go, there's some like ice pinnacles and they're like, it's like four cars on top of each other. And it's like, if that falls on you, you know, that ain't going to be good. And I remember once I was going down and some Sherpas, they don't like it if you go past them, you know, especially if you're a Westerner. And not that I do that, don't get it wrong. But here, this Sherpa was moving with his client, whoever that was. And I was trying to get down fast because there was all these big things around me. The sun was on us. And I'm like, excuse me, he's like, are you in a rush? Are you in a rush? And I looked and I pointed at this big thing, like this big ice thing looming. I went, yeah. And pointed at that. And he went, you're okay. You know, I think once he realised why I was trying to move fast, rather than he probably thought I was just, I don't know what. But it was a safety thing, not, oh, I'm really fast. Look at me thing, because that's not me. So, in fact, just one second. Yeah, Richie, talk us through your summit day then. Right. Well, so the first summit day, because we had to go up twice. So the first, because the actual summit day, the weather was so good, there's not really that much to say about it, you know, we just come from the come out of the South Pole, you know, you get up to the balcony and, you know, you, you get up to the balcony and you sort of like, you cut a left, get it up to the South Summit. And this is the first bit where the mountain starts to go like that. Because, you know, all lower down the mountain, it's literally like a massive field on its side. You know, you just, you're just too close to it to see anything. But as you come from the balcony and you go left, it starts becoming a lot more conical, you know, and you start to really feel like, I'm starting to get there. You can actually start to let yourself believe this is going to happen. You know, because you've really got to kind of keep that in check, you know, is this going to happen, ain't it going to happen? And sort of, as you're getting to that South Summit, and then you can see that summit just across the way, you know, you're like, and you look at the watch and you know everything, it's like not five o'clock yet, and you're like, you can see it, you're like less than an hour from the summit, and you're like, this is actually going to happen. This is really going to happen, you know, and then, you know, you sort of, you know, got the Hillary step, which isn't there anymore, because apparently the rock fell away after the earthquake in 2015, and then you get over the Hillary step, and that wasn't, there wasn't a crowd there or anything like that. There wasn't that many people on the summit when I got there, and then you just get on that last field, you know, and as you go up, you know what, the thing is, there's still so much work to do before you're down and you're safe. So, I didn't really get there and think, yeah, I've made it, I kind of got there and fall, don't drop your guard, you've still got to get down, you know, and you can't see the curvature of the earth from the top of Everest, you're not high enough, and I know people that say that they can and they're public speakers and they just say, Richie, it sounds good, you know, they know, you can't see it, you can't see it, you can't see it from a plane, you can't see it from every, it's a nice thought, you know, and maybe if you've got a picture on a GoPro, because that distorts it, it can show there's a curvature, but unfortunately, I wish you could see it from there, but you just can't, you know, but then you get up there, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, it was, you know, compared to six days before when we tried to summit and there was the deaths and the storm and blah, blah, blah, everything that went wrong six days before went right on this one, you know, and then I remember one of the guys was up there and he actually didn't have a camera and I just took my gloves off to take the camera and my hands were in agony, like I think I took my gloves off for like a minute, took the photo, put the gloves back on and then this guy, Steve, he's an Aussie and he's like, oh Richie, take my picture and I fall and I'm like, not really, I go, my hands are killing me, I go, give us a minute and I go, can you ask like, you're Sherpa that's previous, I'm thinking he's got a camera and then he stood there and went great, I'm on the summit of Everest and I can't get a picture and he realised he didn't have a camera, you know, I thought he wanted me, so I'm like, all right, I took my gloves off, took the quick picture, put the gloves back on, but what an idiot, he goes up there without his camera, you know. Well, everyone must really plan for that, so if they've got their moa, I bet they've got their moa, they've got it, you know, close to their skin to keep the battery warm, it must be the, everyone wants that photo, don't they, or video. Well, that's, I mean, when I climbed Lotsie, because I was on my own on the top, I was using my phone, because a lot of Apple phones, they don't like the altitude either, so my phone was working about 7,800 metres, but when I got onto the summit of Lotsie at 86, it wasn't working and I was there on my own, I couldn't take a summit picture, but hey, I know I did it and I don't care what anyone says, that's my fault, I'm not having that photo, so yeah, for Everest, yeah, you go. So you see these massive queues, Nim's die took one of those iconic pictures of a huge queue, why don't people just, I mean, I'm sure some do, why don't they just get up earlier, go earlier, even if it's darkness when they summit. They do, but it's kind of like people will be leaving between sort of eight at night to midnight, so people will be gradually trickling out, trickling out of South Col for about four hours or three hours, and then on average, they're looking at maybe eight or nine hours to the summit from South Col, maybe something like that, and then as they get there, they just all start to bot all neck up, you know, it's just impossible, I mean, you've got that many people going, it's inevitable, it's just going to end, and then the thing is people, you could go earlier, I mean, my mate, his summit picture, he might as well be in a dark room, it's like, I know he's on Everest because I was there when he did it, but his photo, he might as well be in the toilet with the light off wearing a down suit and took a selfie, you know what I mean? So it's like, it'd be nice to get up there and see a bit of daylight as well, you know, and that's that, and I think that's another thing, why are you going to get that build up, you know? Yes, I would, it's, and you're getting so many people, I would take the getting up there over the, over the scenery, the panorama, simply because the torture of being stuck in that queue, just to get up there in daylight, must, the fact you're stood there thinking, do you know what? The weather turns now, we're all dead, you know, or a good number of these people, they're just going to die, they're all going to start panicking, or they're going to lapse into hypothermia. I think I'd rather just be a lone agent, nipping up there quickly, or as quick as you can, and if it's a bit dark, it, yes. Yeah. Get your photo another day, go to another 8,000. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing as well, because when you're on base camp, you know, everyone's done their acclimatisations, and you'll know what the weather windows are, so say 17, 18, 19, most people probably going for 17, because that's the start of the window, you know, so most people go 17, 18, say with the few risk going for 19, so my mentality, I'd be more likely to go for 19, because then that could get everyone out the way, you know, and it also depends when they are though, because if you might have only one window, and it might come on the 28th and the 29th, and if that's your only window, with the best will in the world, you're not going to review queuing in a situation like that, but then you might get a year where you might get the summit on maybe 12, 13, and then you might get another opportunity around 20, 21, and then you might get another opportunity, very much depends on the year, you know, because it's, you know, you've got the jet stream in that, and the jet stream has to raise to expose that that summit for you to get on it, you know, because when it's just constantly in the jet stream, and you see that sort of like that dust go in, the jet stream rises, which gets you on it, and that's only a handful of times it happens, because as the monsoon comes in, the monsoon comes in off the ocean, hits the Himalayas, goes up, and it kind of raises the jet stream or something like that, as well as creating snow, but, and this happens between summer on the monsoon coming, and then autumn, or the monsoon leaving in autumn, it only happens between those two changes of season, which is why you've always got the spring season and the autumn season for the eight thousanders. Got you. But Everest is always classically done in the spring season, it could be climbed in the autumn, autumn season, probably colder, but you can still get that, those exposed ridges. And you climb from the Nepalese side, is that right? I've actually been on both sides, I, I climbed it, I submitted from the Nepalese side, and in 2018 when I was on the searching for Irving, we only went up to about eight, five, eight, six, I think we didn't submit, that where our search area was. So they found, sorry, they found Mallory in that National Geographic documentary, didn't they, or the documentary? Are you saying, are you saying you had a separate expedition to find Irving? That's right, yeah, yeah. So we had that in 2018, we were, we were looking, I mean, we had, because we had the maps with all the search areas, and we know there's, there's like a full line. So there's like an area where they've found an ISACS, like an ISACS head. And then they've found like a few other things, and then you've got the ISACS head, and then you've got where Mallory was found. So they think there's like a full line down the mountain, and we think Irving's in there somewhere. But like, when they found Mallory, it was a very low snow year, you can look at the documentary, and you see a lot of rock, you know, because there wasn't so much snow. But when we were there, the mountain was just covered. You know, there was just, there was only two of us, so it was really. Did they, they covered Mallory back up, didn't they, with rocks on? Yeah. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. I mean, what our plan would have been, I mean, we was discussing it, and to be honest, if we found him, that would have just been the start of our problems, because you're not actually allowed to search for a body on the south, on the north side, because the Chinese don't want that. And my friend runs company, runs trips there every year. So it's like, this will affect his business. You know, and then we were like, I said, well, I think the moment we find him, we've got to ring the granddaughter and get her involved, because she might not want us touching her relative, you know, and then that would have its own problems. And then we were like, well, let's say we find him and we find the camera, because potentially if we found him, we had the camera that showed Mallory and Summit in 1924, I mean, that's what you're talking about here. I think this was my potential break if it had gone, but it wasn't to be. But because we had a team on the south side as well, we was discussing, maybe if we got the camera, we could go to the summit, hand it over to the guys on the south side, they could take the camera down, but because they're the Sherpa and that, will they understand how important it is to keep that camera cold? You know, can we trust that? And then we were thinking basically what we thought we'd do if we found him, we'd just mark him and get the Chinese government involved. And if they freeze us out, so be it. You know, I think when you're talking about that, you know, you're in China, you're searching for a body, you're on Everest, you're not supposed to be doing that. If you find him, I think you've got no choice but to get them involved, you know, and maybe they might say, no, stay out, we're going to find him and claim the glory and that's fine, but that's the risk we were willing to take if we found him, you know, because Richard, just to finish off, so what's it like then, that monumental moment where you are, let's say five steps from the summit of Everest and your dream is, you know that your dream has come true. Do you know, it's actually a bit of an anticlimax, you know, it's, because as I say, when you get up there, you can't let your guard down, you just can't, you know, and it's like, I got on the summit, I wasn't back to base camp for two days. So it's only when you get to base camp, you can kind of think, I've done it, because the most dangerous bit's the ice fall. And that's the lowest point on the mountain. And that's where most people die historically. So, you know, I'm on the summit, but I've still got to go through that ice fall. You know, so, I mean, to be honest, I was so dehydrated, I think, I think I might have even tried to shed a tear, but I was so dehydrated, nothing come out. Because the oxygen as well, the oxygen really, really dehydrates you, like bad, I couldn't even swallow because it hurt. You know, that's one of the things that comes with that. But I also, I took like a small bowl, my dad's ashes with me, like, and I just sort of like, just from the top, just sort of scattered them out. You know, I didn't, I didn't say anything, I asked my friend about it, and he said, don't say anything to the sherpas, because maybe, you know what I mean, it could be a bit superstitious or something. He's like, all right, you know, I mean, I did it very low profile. I don't think anyone would have noticed what I was doing. You know, but for me, that was quite a nice little touch, just scattering some of my dad's ashes from the summit. You know, that was the real moment, more than the actual standing there, you know. What's one final question from a, again, from a technical point of view, what, what are you drinking on the way up? You know, and why doesn't it freeze? Yeah, right. So, I mean, you know, like tang, tang juice or leucosate sachets or things like that. You know, you can be used out just to get the extra calories in there, or it might just be water, you know, and then when you put your ball of water, so it's boiling hot, and then it sits inside your down soon. I mean, my friend had had it where it's so cold that the water's kind of frozen on the outside bit of the bottle, but the inside bit next to his body is okay, because I think if it gets that cold and it's going to freeze inside your down suit, then you've got bigger problems and dehydration, you know. Richie, this has been an awesome chat. Thank you ever so much. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe we'll reconvene at some point and go for part two. I think I might be taking the team to Everest in spring, in spring, actually, because my mate, he's, he's on Everest, but there's like a Bahrain team. So, he comes under Seven Summits Trek, who were helping Nims as well. So, Seven Summits Trek is like the biggest Nepali company over there. So, we sort of come with them and sort of, I was doing some work for them in 2016, so I think I'll have that team in April, May, yeah, on Everest, but I don't have to Summit. I just have to go to Camp Two, you know, and then sort of be on the radio when all the Summit pushes are happening and all things like that and just the logistics and stuff. So, that's what's next to me. So, if you want to go there, you should get in touch up and get good rates. Yeah, let's, Nims will throw you away anyway, and we can, we can introduce you to the drinking base camp scene. Spent my whole life mate, 30 years trying not to drink. I drink more in the mountains than what I do when I'm at home actually. I'll be honest with you. Yeah, I bet, I bet that's a whole other subject again. Yeah. Richie, stay on the line so I can thank you properly, but on behalf of the podcast, thanks ever so much mate. Brilliant. Thank you. To everybody at home, big love to you all. If you'd like and subscribe and share the video, that would be great, and let's chat soon. Hello, friend. I hope this finds you well. My name's Chris Thrall. I'm a former Royal Marines Commando, and I fought my way back from chronic trauma and addiction to live, work, and travel in 80 countries across all seven continents, achieving all of my dreams and goals along the way. Now, I pass my simple system on to other people, but I can only help you if you like and subscribe. So please do so because you get one life, and if you live it right, one is enough.