WCI #392: Heroes of My Life, Part 1

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.

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Welcome to the White Coat Investor Podcast. I know many of you listening to this podcast in particular this particular episode are not regular listeners to the White Coat Investor Podcast, so let me introduce it to you very briefly. This is a podcast about personal finance investing for high earners, mostly doctors. Probably 75% of the regular audience is doctors, and other people listen to attorneys, small business owners, engineers, tech workers, etc. But typically high earners. That's what most of the financial information is geared at. Now the truth of the matter is 95% of personal finance and investing is the same for everybody and only about 4% of it is specific to high earners and only about 1% of it is specific to doctors. So even if you're not in that target audience for this podcast, you'd probably find most of the stuff on this podcast still pretty relevant and useful to you. So we encourage you to stick around. Even if you kind of just came for this particular episode, this episode is not going to be what we usually.

Talk about on the podcast.

We usually talk about financial planning, investing, how to make your career better, things like that, beating, burnout, those sorts of problems. They're real first world problems for most of the listeners, but they are problems nonetheless. This podcast isn't going to be like that. And in fact, I think a lot of the people listening to this are not doctors at all. They're going to be climbers or other outdoor adventurers. Friends of mine, family of mine, people who just heard something bad happened to me and wanted to hear the details and that's okay. We welcome you to the podcast. We're glad you're here. We hope you find some of this useful, both this episode as well as what we put on most podcasts. But for the next couple of weeks, we're going to talk about some trauma. Some trauma that myself and my family and those of us here at the White Coat Investor have been through. More importantly, and I'm excited to do this, I'm going to introduce you to some of my heroes, the heroes of my life. I have a lot of new heroes now than I used, a lot more heroes now than I used to have in my life. And I've been thanking doctors and other listeners to this show for what they do in their daily lives for many years. I have a new level of gratitude when it comes to that, and you'll soon understand why as you listen to the rest of the story. Now, for regular listeners or those interested really anybody, be aware that we have a real estate webinar coming up. I'll be Talking about Real estate this is the 12th of November at 6pm Mountain. We're going to be talking about how to boost your returns, lower your taxes, and build wealth in real estate. We'll talk about how current interest rates are impacting the real estate market, how real estate can fast track your financial freedom, the pros and cons cons of real estate investment strategies, choosing the right real estate investments for your portfolio, and how to maximize some massive real estate tax deductions that are out there. We'll answer your questions in a Q and A session afterward. It's going to be live November 12th, 6pm Sign up whitecoatinvestor.com realestate webinar. It's totally free. As you listen to this podcast, keep in mind that there is material on the YouTube channel version of this podcast that is not on the audio version of the podcast. I've included pictures from the climb from the rescue and videos of the actual rescue that are quite a bit more interesting than anything I can describe verbally. So highly recommend the YouTube version of this particular podcast. Okay, since many of you aren't doctors that are listening to this, I'm going to try to do a good job of defining the medical terms we use in this podcast in the next since many of you are not climbers, I'm going to try to do a good job of describing the climber terms that we use so that normal people can understand those. I'm going to do the best I can. If I don't define a term and you don't know what it is, Please just Google it. I'm sure it'll be pretty quick to come up. You know, identities are interesting. Many of us out there identify ourselves by our work.

You know, we're a doctor, we're a.

Physician, we're a dentist, we're an attorney, we're a business owner.

Right.

We identify ourselves as husbands or wives or brothers or sisters or parents or whatever.

Right.

One of the things I have identified as for much of my life is as a climber. I've been climbing since I was 14 years old. I was introduced to it in Boy Scouts. We'd go to a local crag and spend an hour or two scampering around on our top rope and trying to get to the top of some ridiculously hard climb while wearing nothing but our usual gym shoes. And it always seemed very difficult back then. But as I became an older teenager, I became more and more interested in it. In fact, my first big climb was Denali the summer I turned 18. Just before I turned 18, I spent three weeks on Denali in Alaska and successfully reached that summit. And after descending from there, I was hooked. And I've been climbing ever since. Other than a few very short periods of my life when I wasn't able to climb for whatever reason, I've been climbing. I love being in the mountains, I love the views. But it's not about the summit most of the time. It truly is the journey along the way that is most enjoyable. Climbers are interesting people. A lot of us are dirtbags. We get used to making some financial sacrifices in order to do what we love. They may be living out of a van, quite literally camping out, eating pretty crummy food, just in order to be able to have the time to spend in the mountains. And that's been me. And a lot of times in my life, I can remember sleeping in a ditch down outside of Las Vegas and in a tent and getting up at 4 o' clock in the morning to hike into a rock climb, spend all day climbing. And the type of climbing I like is not necessarily the particularly gymnastic climbing. I've never really loved climbing indoors, for instance. Climbing indoors feels to me like skiing at a ski resort.

Right.

It's like skiing, but it's not the same thing. And climbing in the gym is like climbing, but it's not the same thing. It's like a workout for climbing. I like long routes in the mountains, spending all day on 8 pitches of a 5, 8 climb, which is a climbing rating, 8 pitches or 8 rope lengths. Sounds like a great day to me. A little bit of planning, a little bit of a hike in to get there, some great times with somebody I care about, and a little bit of risk and some obstacles overcome. It feels pretty good to get to the end of a day like that. And I've had many, many great days like that in my life. I'm not the world's best climber by any means. In fact, I'm consider routes that are considered. I climb routes that are considered by most to be quite moderate, not necessarily short or easy, but not terribly difficult in terms of sheer difficulty of the hardest move on the route. Now, climbs are rated by the hardest move on the route. So if the whole climb is very, very easy, but there's one terribly difficult move, it gets a difficult rating. And it uses, you know, most climbing in the US uses the Yosemite decimal system. So a one is basically walking down a trail, a two is an uphill trail, three is where you're starting to scramble. Maybe you're using your hands a little bit as you scramble around, but you know, you don't really feel like you need a rope. At a four. Most people want a rope. You know, guides would say they don't need a rope, but their clients do. On a Class 4 climb, once you get to Class 5 climbing, that's where most people are going to be using a rope. Obviously there's some people out there that free solo climb without ropes. I'm not one of those people for the most part. And so when I do fifth class climbing, I'm typically using a rope. And that starts at 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, and actually these days goes all the way to 5.155. Climb is far more difficult than anything I've ever climbed and usually involves overhanging, clinging to the tiniest of holds for 50 or 100ft until you get to the top of that particularly difficult climb. Most long climbs, the type I enjoy, are not 5 15s. You know, most of them will have a moderate rating like a 5.758595 10. Those sorts of ratings, that's most of the climbing I've done over the years because I love long climbs in the mountains. The basic process of climbing is probably important for people to understand before listening to the rest of this podcast. A typical climbing team is two climbers. You have one that is doing the climbing, doing the leading, and the other person is holding the other end of the rope. That's Called belaying. They are the belayer and they are secured either on the ground or to the side of the mountain. When they are doing that belaying, they're essentially in quite a safe place. I mean, there's risks to everything, I suppose, but you're pretty safe while you're belaying. The leader, on the other hand, is not safe. They're the one taking the risk. The phrase is the sharpening of the rope. And as you lead, you put in protection. This is gear that attaches you to the cliff that you are ascending. There might be bolts that have been drilled into the cliff and you're just clipping a carabiner onto them and attaching your rope to it. Oftentimes it is little metal chocks that you wedge into a crack or active camming devices that push off on both sides of a crack and then you attach the rope to that. And this way, if the leader falls, they will fall down to the last piece of protection they placed and that much further. So if you put a piece in every 10ft, you could fall 10ft to that last piece of protection and another 10ft beyond it. So a 20 foot fall would be what you are risking. If you are putting in protection every 10ft, if you're putting in protection every 5ft, you're risking a 10 foot fall, etc. And that's the way it works. When the leader gets to the end of the pitch or rope length, they secure themselves to multiple pieces of protection in the form of an anchor and are secure often on a ledge, and then bring the belayer or second climber up. Now, the beautiful thing about being the second climber is that you have a top rope. This rope goes straight from you up to your belayer. Your Blair is now above you. And so if you fall, you know there's a little stretch in the rope, maybe you fall six inches. And so it's really not particularly risky most of the time to be the second climber, the risk is taken by the leader. And most climbing teams alternate pitches, right? One person leads one, then the other person leads one. Then one person leads one, the other person leads one. Sometimes they block them together and lead three or four in a row and then switch. And sometimes one climb, the climber does all the leading, but for the most part, they swing leads. One person leads one and then the other. And so you're really only at risk half of the time because you're only leading half of the time, the rest of the time your risk is much, much lower. And so that's the basic process of climbing as you work your way up a climb. If there's 10 pitches on the climb, you will do that process 10 times, where the leader goes up and then brings the belayer up. Only one person is climbing at a time, and so it can be a slow process, but the longer the route, the faster you need to do the process. And it matters how quickly you can transition from one leader to the next and to do the various parts of the climb in order to get to the top. So I hope that's helpful to you. Now, I've been climbing for a long time. I'm almost 50 years old. And I've gotten to the point in my life where while my experience level is still increasing, my physical strength and physical abilities are starting to decrease. And the sum of those two things is probably now starting to decrease. I've recognized this the last two or three years. And so I've been trying to tick off the hard stuff. These routes that have been my bucket list for years, that I've always wanted to do. And the last few years I've been doing quite a few of those, especially as I've been able to work a little bit less thanks to the financial principles that we usually talk about here at the White Coat Investor. An example of this is Half Dome, which I climbed last year with my main climbing partner, Christian. We spent three days on Half Dome. It took us longer than we thought it would, but it never felt particularly dangerous. It was very challenging to us. But we climbed the face of Half Dome over the course of about two and a half days, and it was a wonderful experience. It was an incredible place, just like I expected it to be. It was very hard for us and we managed to do it safely. Neither of us had any significant falls at all during the time we were on there, but it was a great experience. I've spent a lot of time in the Tetons Teton National Park. You may have been to driven by, maybe even done some hikes in. When I go to the Tetons, I'm not interested in going the places most of the tourists are going. I'm interested in climbing the peaks. And there are a number of high peaks in the Tetons that climbers cherish. They've been going there for many decades to climb these peaks. These include the Grand Teton, the Middle Teton, the South Teton, Mount Owen and Tewinot. That's the five main peaks there. Another major peak is called Mount Moran, which is also quite high. I've climbed all of these peaks by various routes over the years. I've done them with friends, I've done them with family, I've done them, I've climbed them with my wife, I've climbed them with my children, and it has been a wonderful time to experience these. A lot of these routes are just fantastic climbs. They are sunny, they have solid rock on them, they are beautiful and they're all in an incredibly stunning location. Sometimes there's some snow or ice involved, especially if you climb earlier in the summer than later in the summer. And sometimes the routes have some less than stunning aspects to them. You know, maybe some loose rock, maybe some challenging route finding. But many of the climbs are not that hard. Incredibly beautiful and fairly safe as rock climbing goes, not all of them are. However, you know, in these last few years, when I've been trying to tick off the hard stuff, I always wanted to do. One of the routes I did with a friend was called the grand, or rather the Cathedral Traverse. And this is a climb up Mount Teewinot, along the ridge between Teewinot and Mount Owen, to the summit of Mount Owen, and then down across the Grandstand, the formation of rock between Mount Owen and the Grand Teton, up the north ridge of the Grand Teton and then down the Grand Teton back to the parking lot. This is often done in a single push with no rest. And that's how we did it. We started at 1 o' clock in the morning or so and saw the sun rise on top of Teewinot and the sun set on the summit of the Grand Teton and got back to the car six hours later. We were exhausted. We'd been moving for 26 hours at the time, but it was a pretty incredible day and a pretty awesome accomplishment for us. Now that has been done as little as eight hours by incredible climbers that don't use much in the way of ropes or protection. But that is not the kind of climbers we are. We're much more normal climbers and it took us over 24 hour period to do it. Now, while climbing the north ridge of the Grand Teton, we got a pretty good look at the north face of the Grand Teton. And this is a route I've wanted to do for many years, but did not. Why not? Because it's scary. It's a scary route.

Okay.

It's the longest climbing route on the Grand Teton, which is the highest mountain in the Tetons. However, it's also a pretty incredible route. A climber who did it in 1985 said. The north face of the grand is the most hauntingly beautiful place I've seen. You're above a glacier in a high, jagged cirque with slowly but constantly changing light conditions. It's visually breathtaking. Each year, changing snow and ice conditions may make it seem an entirely different climb from one year to the next. And it is. It's a beautiful place. I've been staring at that face for decades wanting to climb it. You can see it when you climb Teewinot. You can see it when you climb Mount Owen. You can see it when you do the north ridge of the Grand. You can see it from the valley. It's an iconic face and it is considered one of the 50 classic climbs of North America by a book of the same title and has been on the bucket list of many climbers in the past. However, it has been the scene of at least one major rescue. There's a movie out there called the Grand Rescue and it's the story of a rescue that became legend in 67 on the north face of the Grand Teton, seven rescuers risked their lives to save a severely injured climber and his companion. The rescue took three harrowing days and pushed the team to new abilities. Remarkably, the injured climber was critical of those who risked their lives to save his. Two climbers became stranded high on a ledge after rockfall caused a serious injury and the rescue team came to their aid, relying on innate skill and trust in one another to accomplish the daring rescue. In this movie, the Grand Rescue, the rescuers and survivors relive the trial with honesty and unabashed candor. The rescue captured the attention and nature of the nation and left a lasting impression on all involved. So if you're interested in learning more about rescues on the north face of the Grand Teton, I'd suggest watching that movie. I think it came out in 2011 and can be found on the Internet. The website Onlyin Wyoming said this about that rescue and this was one of the few things on the Internet about this route that I read prior to going to climb says in the 1960s, mountaineering rock climbing was still a niche sport. There weren't any rock gyms and climbers were seen as part of a counterculture. In the mountains of the United States, one of the most popular climbing destinations in the country was Grand Teton National Park. It offered dozens of technical routes, stunning scenery and welcoming community of alpine climbers. For years, the north face of the Grand Teton was considered one of the most challenging climbs in the world. This intimidating route was Technically dangerous and on many climbers bucket lists. It was first ascended in 1936, but but it had eluded many climbers in the years following. Lorraine, Hugh and Gaylord Campbell were attempting the route and had nearly completed their climb on August 21st. Note that date 1967 when disaster struck. Just below the summit, large rocks broke loose and sent Campbell tumbling down the rocky face. He was injured badly. Hugh made a splint with her ice pick and wrapped her partner in a sleeping bag and began to cry for help. She flashed SOS with her flashlight but never saw any response. There was no way for her to make it down the face with Campbell on her own. Miraculously, two climbers heard cries for help from the north face while they were climbing Mount Owen. They raced down to the Jenny Lake ranger station and reported to Ralph Tingey. They showed up at Tingey's ranger cabin door to report that while on Mount Owen, they'd heard cries for help from the north face. Ralph Tingy, just 22 years old, called out to the other rangers and began to assess the situation. There had never been a rescue on the north face. Tingyi saw Hugh's flashlights and responded in kind. But she was never able to make out his response. As the pair spent their first night on the grand, she was unaware that a team of talented mountaineers was making their plan. Tingy, along with other rangers Pete Sinclair and Rick Reese, park employees Ted Wilson, later the mayor of Salt Lake, and Mike Ermarth made up the rescue team. It just so happened that world class mountaineers Lee Ortenberg and Bob Irvine were on the summit of the grand and quickly descended to help the efforts. The rangers were airlifted to a ledge on the north face and began their daring rescue attempt. The only way to help Campbell was to lower him 2,000ft to the Teton Glacier where a helicopter could remove him. He was placed in a stretcher to stabilize his broken leg and the rescue began. They radioed for the needed supplies and had to spend a night on the mountain waiting for the helicopter to deliver the needed rope, cables and morphine. The next day they were able to carefully descend 1100ft. The climbers spent one more night on the Grand Teton before the final day. When they reached the Teton Glacier, the team worked for hours to create a spot for the helicopter to pick up Campbell and he made it to the hospital. That evening the rescue team headed back down to the Ginny Lake cabin where they found a case of beer waiting for them. After three exhausting and dangerous days on the north Base. They'd achieved what many thought was impossible and saved Gaylord Campbell's life. They never heard from Campbell after that until he criticized the rescue in a documentary. Campbell claimed the climbers should have carried him out backpack style, which would have been quicker, would have put his life at risk due to a chance of severing arteries in his leg. I'm sorry, I get emotional telling that story. It comes a little close to home. Now, let me tell you a little bit about this route, the north face of the Grand Teton. The first exploration of this route was done in 1933 by Paul Petzold. He traversed in from the north ridge to check out the route possibilities. But it wasn't until 1936 that he made the first ascent with his brother Elden and and Jack Durance. Durance was an exceptional climber, one of the most famous climbers of the day and did most of the leading. They were stimmied up the last 500ft and traversed off to the north ridge on what is known as the second ledge. The complete north face wasn't climbed until 1949 by Dick Pownall, Ray Garner and Art Gilkey. In the fading light of dusk, Palnall unlocked the key to the upper face with his brilliant lead of the pendulum pitch. That pitch, which he swung across on the rope penduluming, was later free climbed, obviously with a rope, not free soloing on the second ascent in 1953 by Dick Emerson. So a description of this route is you hike up for a couple of hours on trails. From the parking lot, you gain 3,000 vertical feet or so, and then you leave the trail. You weave through a moraine, the debris left behind by the Teton Glacier, and climb up it and then eventually reach the glacier itself and continue to ascend with spikes on your feet called crampons and an ice axe in your hand. To secure yourself to the glacier, you ascend by this point another 2,000 vertical feet. So you've climbed 5,000 vertical feet since the time you left the parking lot. Then you come to the end of the glacier and you discover that it has melted away from the wall of the mountain. This is called a bergschrund or a moat, and that moat can be pretty deep. You have to get across it onto the face of the rock itself. You then climb several pitches of nondescript and difficult to describe loose rock with challenging route finding before you get into the Guano Chimney, the first named pitch on the route, and obviously not always the most pleasant, given that it's often covered in guano. That leads to what's called the first ledge. You then ascend up this first ledge, which is quite long and actually not flat at all, then climb a pitch up to the second ledge. From that point, you can escape from the route. You can get over to the usual descent route, which is on the west side of the mountain. From the second ledge, the harder pitches start showing up on this route, including the famous pendulum pitch, as well as one that's called the traverse into the V and you move on to the summit. Once you reach the summit, you go down the standard descent route, which involves a couple of rappels and quite a bit of down climbing and hours of hiking, something that's taken me about six hours to do in the past. From the summit back to the parking lot. That's the route that I went to climb in the Tetons on August 21st of 2024. This is something I'd wanted to do for a long time and planned carefully, gotten into excellent shape for, gathered all the appropriate gear for, and felt like I had the skills to accomplish. In the rest of this podcast and the next podcast, I'm going to be interviewing some guests. All of these guests are my heroes. There are other heroes that are not guests on this podcast that also had a role in the story, but let's start by introducing the guests that are going to show up in these two podcasts.

All right, thank you, Dr. Dalley, appreciate you having me here. But I'm Dr. Clint Van Hoffman. I currently live in Idaho Falls, Idaho, work at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical center and I work in the emergency department. So I'm an ER physician.

My name is Brandon Kelly. I'm a neurosurgeon in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And I take call at a level two trauma center and I have a.

General neurosurgery practice and I also do complex spine reconstruction.

My name is Ken Kreiss. I am a Ginny Lake Climbing Ranger in Grand Teton National Park.

All right, My name is Mick Shane and I do a bunch of seasonal work in the national parks and I got a job working as a Jenny Lake Ranger for Grand Teton national park about eight years ago.

My name is Brett Stevens and I.

Am the COO of the White Coat Investor, which means I run the day to day operations. I live in Sandy, Utah, actually real close to Jim.

So I'm Christian Feinhauer, I'm an ER doctor. I live in Mill Creek, which is kind of part of Salt Lake City, and I work at a few local hospitals around here in the ER So.

I'm Katie Dally, I'm married to Jim. I am the chief product officer here at the White Coat Investor and we live in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Okay, let's talk about the mountains because this is a place you and I have spent a lot of time in the last 25 years. What have the mountains meant to our.

Family over the last 25 years?

The mountains are a very special place to us. It's really, the mountains are a happy place. We like to go to the mountains. There's just something calming and peaceful about being in the mountains and just connecting you to nature. And so we spend a lot of time doing a variety of activities in the mountains, from hiking to mountain biking, climbing, canyoneering, skiing. We like to be in the mountains and we get there as often as we can. There's a reason we live at the base of the mountains and they're a mile from our home to be hiking and participating in the mountains.

When we moved to Utah after my time in the military, we deliberately put a point at the mouth of Little Cottonwood canyon, drew a 2 mile radius circle around that and looked at every home for sale in that circle. Those are the only homes we looked at to buy. We wanted to be near the mountains. Little Cottonwood Canyon has two world class ski resorts as rock climbing and ice climbing and mountain biking and road biking and hiking and backcountry skiing. It's a beautiful place. There's a reason we live here and it's because we like to spend time doing that stuff. It's great to be able to do it within minutes of the house. You know, we ride our bike right out of the garage. There's no driving to the trailhead and frankly we can go trail running right out of the garage as well. So it's, it's been a wonderful thing for us to be in the mountains.

The Grand Teton is a special place. There's nothing, you know, regardless of whether you do it in a day and you're starting at, you know, 12 o' clock in the morning or if you're starting from the upper saddle at, you know, 5:00am Lower saddle or sorry, the lower saddle at 5:00am you know, it's dark when you first start climbing and as you watch that sun come up and you just have these glorious views, I wish I could take you to that final ridge as you're ascending up to the summit and you're just looking, you know, down this, the ridge of mountains. And off to, you've got Wyoming, off to one side and Idaho off the other side, and you just feel like you're on top of the world. It's really awe inspiring. And so the Grand Teton is a special place. It's beautiful lakes all around, and it's just got some incredible views up top. And so we enjoy climbing it. And it's a reason, it's sort of a bucket list item for our kids to take them when they're in their teens to go and climb the Grand Teton. So three of our four kids have done it so far, and yeah, we just really enjoy it. And really, his climbing took off in medical school when he met his friend Christian, that was actually climbing with him on the day of the accident that they met in first year medical school. And so they spent a lot of time, the afternoons after class, climbing in the nearby Wasatch Mountains. And so that's where he really started getting into climbing a lot more.

All right, now, 25 years ago, you married a climber. Did the risk of something happening to that climber concern you at that time?

Well, 25 years ago when I married a climber, he was sort of a hat climber. He only did a little bit at the time. And really his climbing took off in medical school when he met his friend Christian, that was actually climbing with him on the day of the accident that they met in first year medical school. And so they spent a lot of time, the afternoons after class, climbing in the nearby Wasatch Mountains. And so that's where he really started getting into climbing a lot more. But as far as any concerns? No, at the time, we did a lot of outdoor high adventure activities and everything has some risk.

So I'm Christian Feinhauer, I'm an ER doctor.

Okay. And can you tell the audience where you first met me?

So I met you my first year of medical school because we were in the same medical school class.

And what was I like in medical school?

You were always competitive and everything you did that included school and climbing, which we did a lot together.

Okay. So we started climbing together in 99, you know, basically 25 years ago, we started climbing together. And how many different states have we climbed in together? I mean, we've climbed in Colorado. I think we've climbed together in Arizona, haven't we?

Yep.

Certainly all over Utah, several places in Wyoming. I think we've been to Oregon. We've certainly been to multiple places in California and Nevada together to climb over the last 25 years. Any other states I'm leaving out?

Well, British Columbia. That's.

Oh yeah, British Columbia. That's right. We've been to British Columbia and we've also been to Italy. Done Via Ferratis together in Italy before.

True.

So we've known each other for a long time. We've been climbing together for a long time. But that's not all we do together. We've had some other adventures together. We've paddled some rivers together, pack rafting, including the Escalante and the Zion Narrows in the last year. And we've been canyoneering together now for a couple of weeks a year for the last, what, 10 years anyway?

About 10 years.

It's a whole lot of time together in slot canyons. So what did you think when I called you up and suggested we go climb the north face of the Grand Teton?

Well, I know that you've spent a lot more time in the Tetons than I have. You've been up to the top of the grand several times. I've been up there too. I knew the North Face was quite a bit more serious of a route, like, logistically, and it's one of the 50 classic climbs in North America, so I was game for it. Sounded like an adventure and another kind of thing to tick off the list.

What do you think as you started doing research online and in the few available books about the route?

Well, for a route that's supposed to be so classic, there was actually not a lot of information out there, which was a little unsettling because, you know, the Grand Teton is, you know, gets climbed by dozens of people every day, if not hundreds. So you think a route to the top that's supposed to be so classic would have a lot more information about it. I guess I didn't know exactly what I was going to expect because there wasn't like, really detailed descriptions about where you're going to go. Just kind of go up to this ledge, work your way to the next ledge, keep going up, avoid all the chassis loose stuff that you can until you make it to the top.

Yeah. So when, as you prepared for this climb, were you particularly nervous about it, or you feel that this was too hard for your ability, or were you worried at all about us completing this route?

No.

I mean, I didn't think it was beyond our ability at all. My biggest concern was, like, are we going to make good enough time that we can get off the top of the mountain and get back to our car before 3 o' clock in the morning or something like that? That was kind of my bigger concern, rather than any doubt that we'd be able to do it.

But we also had the advantage of knowing there was an escape from the route. You know, when you get about three quarters of the way up and actually before you get to the hardest climbing, you can get off the route and get over to the usual descent route relatively easily in a place I'd been before. So I wasn't terribly worried. I knew if we were running late, we'd get off the thing and at least be on relatively safe ground by the time night fell. So I wasn't terribly worried about that. I didn't know if we'd actually finish the route, but I had no doubt in my mind that we could get to where we could escape from the route without having to spend a night on that face.

Now you've climbed the North Face, this route I ran into trouble on. Tell us your thoughts about the route about the north face of the Grand Tikon.

Well, it's. I've heard from a lot of people it's a must do, I think, because it's just iconic.

It's a.

It's a classic route. It's not a clean route. It's. It's a lot of wandering, a lot of loose rock, a lot of sections that are not high quality, but it's definitely an adventure and it's a big one. And it's. It involves a lot of different kinds of climbing. You got to approach on a glacier, you got to deal with a Bergshawn crossing, a lot of third, fourth class rambling terrain, and some more technical parts. I would describe it as a one that I would highly recommend. It's not a route that I would probably do every summer. After Ken and I did that, we were happy to have done it again. I'd recommend it, but I think doing it once is maybe twice as plenty.

Now you and Mick have climbed the North Face, can you tell the audience your thoughts about that particular route?

It's a super cool route and, you know, it's really historic and, you know, for this mission, it was actually really. It was a cool experience that Mike and I had actually climbed North Face together and then we were on this rescue together, going back in there. So it was, it was cool to, you know, be able to talk to him as we were getting ready to fly in there. And like, oh, yeah, you remember when we were doing this or doing that and we got horrendously off route in the first few pitches. But, you know, it was, it was cool that we had had that personal experience together.

So we get to the glacier it's starting to get light. What were you, how were you feeling at that point?

I was feeling pretty good. Thought we were making pretty good time. I thought we might have been a little faster than that to that point, but didn't think we were falling back too far. I was kind of excited to go across the glacier. That looked pretty fun.

Yeah, I mean, it's beautiful up there. Right at this point, the sun's come up and we're between Mount Owen and Teewinot and the Grand Teton on a glacier. It's an incredible place. Right? It's super beautiful. And looking at the glacier, was that intimidating to you at all?

Well, it was a little intimidating when a big avalanche broke off of the right side and came tumbling down towards us. Looked like just a piece of that snow field sort of cut loose and tumbled down the side of the mountain. Nothing that was any danger to us but makes you realize that ice and snow and rock is all always moving and shifting and stuff can break loose and fall at any time.

It certainly was a bad omen for our day, wasn't it, looking back? But I agree, I wasn't particularly intimidating to me at all. It actually didn't even fall down the route where we were going. It's kind of off to the side of the glacier. So we work our way up to the Bergschrund to the moat where the glacier has melted away from the cliff. And this is known by many that have done the North Face as one of the most challenging parts of it. When we got there, that gap between the glacier and the rock was what, 2 1/2 ish feet wide, maybe, you think, and at least 40ft deep.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Big deep bergs run. But we were pretty close to the.

Rock, so we took off our rock shoe or we took off our, our mountaineering boots. We took off our crampons, took off our ice axes and put on our rock shoes and our climbing gear and roped up with this point and I think I had the climbing gear on my harness, so I took the first lead and stepped across this, this bird Schrund, this moat, started climbing on the rocks, started putting gear in and, and worked my way up around, you know, a little bit of remaining snow and ice, up to a belay spot and then brought you up at that point and then it was your turn for your first lead. What, what were your thoughts going up for your first lead on the route?

Well, like I said from the research I did, wasn't a lot of detail about where you're supposed to go. We knew it was supposed to be about 5, 7, maybe 5, 8. Supposed to be kind of trending slightly left, but kind of going up through all this loose stuff, I came across some moves that seemed pretty challenging. So I ended up kind of moving left because I was like, that's harder than 5.7 or 58 if I go this direction. So it definitely wasn't straightforward climbing. But as long as I kept kind of looking for the areas of weakness, nothing that was super difficult from a rock climbing standpoint. At one point, I came up to some rock that had a bunch of sling on. It looked like it might be a belay spot, but I didn't feel like I'd gone far enough to really stop there. So at that point, I sort of went left around this corner into a kind of more open chausy gully. And because I'd gone around this corner, I started to get some rope drag at that point. So I was trying to go higher, but the climbing wasn't hard. But I had a lot of rope drag. So after actually going up and trying to find a place to make my belay, my anchor, I ended up coming back down about 20ft to this ledge off to the side that had, like, the only decent rock around there that I felt would hold a good anchor.

And in retrospect, it's good you went to that spot because it turned out that anchor was very important. All right, so we're starting up the third pitch at this point, and it's my turn to lead, and I'll talk about what I remember. So I placed about four pieces of gear. The last one maybe not so great because I was getting into some loose rocks. And then I remember at one point thinking, all four of my holds are loose, both of my hand holds and both of my footholds are loose. This is not good. But I looked up and saw that it got a lot easier in about 6ft. If I could get to that point, then I thought I'd be home free for the rest of this pitch. And that's my last memory for quite some time. So I'm going to let you take over the story at that point with what you saw next, Christian.

Okay, so, yeah, so you were leading. You were on the sharp end, as we say, because that's where all the risk is. And you were going up this shallow, I'll say dihedral, which means kind of where rock makes an angle into sort of a corner. And the bottom section was pretty easy, but you had gotten up where it was steeper and very loose. I remember you calling down, saying, this is loose. Watch me. And I even remember you kicking off little pieces of rock from your footholds. And so I was walking pretty closely, and I could see above you there was sort of almost a little ledge where it got a lot easier. And you were making a move up for there. I remember you reached your hand out, right, kind of to get to that ledge, and whatever you put your hand on just broke right off some loose piece of rock. And you fell. That's the point where you fell off to your right side. And I was watching you and holding the rope, and you fell. And it seems like you hit or glanced off of sort of a small ledge below you, but then you just kept falling. And I would estimate it was about 30ft or so, and you were kind of falling head first because you had fallen off towards your right and that handhold had broken loose. And it was pretty obvious to me that you must have pulled a piece or you wouldn't have fallen so far. So I think that last piece you had placed in the rock just came right out. And so I just heard a thud as you hit the rock. And I call over to you, and all I'm hearing is this loud breathing, and I'm calling your name, and you weren't answering at all. And my first thought was just like, wow, this isn't just a fall, but he's really hurt. This has turned into something else. You know, this is where the memory's a little fuzzy. I don't know how long everything took, because time kind of stands still when you're in a situation that's kind of this scary. I could hear you breathing, so I knew you were alive, but you weren't responding to me at all. You were just hanging on the rope, kind of mostly upside down at a bit of an angle. And when I kind of looked around the corner, I could see all this blood kind of dripping off your face and a bunch of water, which at first took me a minute to realize. I think you broke your water bladder that was on your back in your backpack when you fell. So all that water was just pouring over your shoulders onto your head, dripping down onto the rock. So after a minute or two, when I realized you were not responsive and you weren't going to be able to rescue yourself, I figured I had to get up there. So, thankfully, you weren't putting a lot of force on the rope because the area you landed was sort of low angle, so you were putting some weight on the rope, but a lot of your weight was on the rock. So I was able to tie off the rope and attach it to the anchor. So the rope that went from you up through the last piece you placed is. And down to my belay device. I tied that to our anchor so you were secure. And then I was able to, what we call escape the belay, meaning get the rope out of my belay device. Now, sometimes that can be really challenging if all of the weight of the climber is on the rope. But thankfully, that wasn't the case. So at this point, I had completely gotten off of my anchor, off of the rope, and I was basically free soloing, because I could tell that the terrain coming right off of the ledge where I was belaying from was pretty easy. I'd say it was less than fifth class. So I scrambled up these broken ledges up to where you were, and you were still not responding, breathing really heavily, and you were kind of mostly upside down, pressed up against a rock, kind of an awkward position. So I actually did attach a sling that I had into one of the pieces you had placed in the rock, which just happened to be close to where you were hanging. So I was secured into the rock while I tried to sort of manipulate your body to get you upright. So I was really trying to hold your neck and your head. You know, I don't know if you have a cervical spine injury or exactly what the extent of your injuries are. And then trying to just maneuver you so your legs would sort of fall downwards, trying to get gravity to sort of let you fall into a more upright position. And thankfully that was the case. And so I got you kind of upright, leaning against the rock, and I kind of started just looking to see, like, your breathing's good. I don't see any obvious deformities in your extremities. I still kept calling your name. And then you started to just wake up. I was like, thank goodness he's at least waking up. But you had no idea what was going on. Your first few words were just like, what's happening? Where are we? And I'd say, we're on the Grand Teton. And you just said, why are we here?

Which was a great question right at that point. A fantastic question. Most intelligent thing I could have possibly said at that point.

Yeah, so, I mean, I think you were unconscious for, you know, at least 10 minutes would be my estimation. You still had all this blood running off of your forehead. Your helmet wasn't broken, so I guess it did what it was supposed to do. But unfortunately I think you landed mostly on your face rather than on your helmet. And so after a few minutes when you were awake, I was kind of asking you what hurt. You said your left wrist hurt. It was all taped up and stuff, so I couldn't really examine it very closely, but I thought that wasn't very important at the moment. Your breathing seemed fine. You said your legs were not hurting you so you could kind of stand on a little ledge there. At that point I decided that I should probably go back to the belay and try to lower you to the belay. So we've got you on a nice big stable platform and get you clipped into the belay ledge. And so that's what I did. I free soloed back to my belay ledge and clipped myself back into the anchor. I put you back on belay and then I coaxed you down to the ledge, which was actually pretty challenging because if I told you something a few seconds later, you didn't remember what I told you. So I would have to say, jim, lean back on the rope, I'm going to lower you down to this ledge. And you'd take a step and then you'd look around and you'd say, where are we? What are we doing here? And I'd have to reiterate, we're on the north face of the Grand Teton. I need to get you to this ledge, Lean back and slowly you came down and got to the ledge and walked over and I clipped you in with a few pieces to the anchor. And one thing I remember you kept saying was, is this a dream? You kept asking, is this a dream? Is this real? Did this really happen? This just feels like a dream. As soon as I kind of got us both really clipped into the anchor on that belay ledge seemed pretty stable. I could see you were breathing, you were awake, but obviously very concussed. Had a pretty significant head injury. I thought, well, I don't think we're going to be able to wrap off of this and self extricate at this point. So I've got to call for help. And you mentioned you had an inreach and I know you've had that on a lot of our trips, but I've never really used it. I know you had sent some text messages. I didn't know where it was in your pack somewhere for some reason. I had been reading about some self rescue devices and some of them I thought used a bluetooth that went to your phone as an interface. So I thought maybe I should use your phone in case it's somehow connected to the inreach. But I just used your phone to call 911 and lo and behold, it went right through.

Hello, dispatch, this is Andrew. Hey, this is Christian. So I'm on the north face of the Grand Teton with my friend Jim and he just took a leader fall, hit his head, was unconscious for about 10 minutes or so. He's awake now, but very head injured, perseverating. I think we're gonna need a rescue. Okay. We're only like the north face. Yeah. He's bleeding from his face and his left wrist hurts, but he doesn't know where he is or what we're doing up here. All right, got it. I can get you on with the search and rescue, one of our search rescue folks right now. Okay, just one second.

Hello?

Hi, this is Christian.

And are you at the scene of the incident?

Yes, I am.

Okay, can you tell me what's going on and where you are?

We're on the north face of the Grand Teton.

Okay.

And we're only about two to three pitches up. So we crossed the glacier and we were going up and my friend Jim was leading some rock broke. He took a big fall. Okay. And so he's very head injured. He was unconscious for about 10 minutes. Now he's awake, he's bleeding from his face, he's perseverating and doesn't really remember how we got up here. His left wrist hurts. He's able to walk. I was able to lower him down to the last ledge that we were blowing from. Okay. I don't have to talk with him if I can lower him back to the glacier or if he's even capable of that.

Okay, and how. And what's the name of the injured party? And how old is he?

Jim or James? Dolly. D as in dog. A H L E. Okay.

How old is he?

He's 49.

Okay, and roughly how much does he weigh?

210.

210 pounds. And what do you have for gear with you? Do you have a puffy shell, gear, etcetera?

Yeah, it's got a puff gear. I think we've got a micro attraction. Okay.

All right, so you're in pretty good shape in terms of your supplies and stuff, correct?

Yeah, we have some food and water and some warm weather gear.

Okay, and how many people are in your party right now?

Just. Just two.

Just you and James?

Yep.

Okay, so what's gonna happen now is we're gonna be mobilizing a rescue for you, there's going to be a helicopter that's going to be in the air and they're going to do a reconnaissance of the site where you are and then come up with a rescue plan for getting you extracted from where you are. I just want to get an idea what you're wearing for clothing. What do you have on for clothing and what color is it?

So I've got a blue fleece and brown pants. He's got like a orange shirt and dark gray pants.

Okay.

Now are you.

You're two to three pitches up on the north face, but have you got to any of the ledges yet at all?

Yeah, we're well below the first ledge.

You're below the first ledge.

Okay.

All right, Good. Okay, we're. We're gonna put a full effort into the rescue right now. So I'm gonna be hanging up with you and Christian. If you have anything else, you can call us back and I may be calling you.

Okay? Okay. Thank you.

Okay, you're welcome. You'll see you shortly.

And so they. I don't know who I talked to at first, but they transferred me to somebody at the national park and then they transferred me to the actual search and rescue folks who were going to do the rescue.

Jenny Lake rangers.

Yep, the rangers.

My name is Mick Shane and I do a bunch of seasonal work in the national parks. And I got a job working as a Jenny Lake ranger for Grand Teton national park about eight years ago.

Now let's go back to that morning of August 21st when this call came in. What were you doing when you first heard that we were having a problem on the north face? And what were your initial thoughts? We.

There was about maybe seven or eight of us, if I remember. Kind of a mix of seasonal and permanent ranger staff at the rescue cache in Lupin Meadows. And our plan for the day was to do a helicopter based training, a short haul training, which was very lucky as it turned out that all those resources were there waiting when this call came in.

You were literally already at the helicopter, standing around the helicopter, ready to do some training with the helicopter.

Yep. It's funny how that happens. There's been a few of those examples this summer. Very similar. So it's ironic how sometimes that happens, but we do a lot of trainings. I'm very thankful for our program to be able to set aside resources and time to stay up on these skills. One of the duties that most of us have is being a SAR search and rescue coordinator for the day, which is a 24 hour shift. And you're basically the person who takes a call and organizes a rescue. If you've done any work within that field of rescue, you call it the incident commander. The ic, A guy by the name of John Paulides was training to be SAR coordinator. And so he and I were put together. I've been taking that role for three or four seasons now. And John's been around for 30 plus years, more as a paramedic in the park. But he's kind of joined our group and he's one of us these days. So he was training and I was overseeing. And the phone rang at the rescue cache and we saw John disappear. It was probably his third or fourth day shadowing someone who's SAR coordinated for a few years. And when that happens, you disappear into a room, but there's windows. And we're all watching to see, is this something about to happen? And somebody walked in and took a look over his shoulder and saw that he had scribbled down north face of the Grand. And if I'm remembering right, I think what caught his eye was unconscious. 10 minutes, possible head injury. Some of this stuff was just scribbled on a little piece of paper. So that guy came out and announced to everyone that we had something going on and that we were gonna divert from our training.

My name is Ken Kreiss. I am a Ginny Lake climbing ranger in Grand Teton National Park. That route is, you know, famous in North American climbing and mountaineering. And certainly the Tetons is a early historic North Face route that has always held a certain aura and mystique. You know, it's big, it's steep, it's potentially dangerous. And then our team has had a couple missions on the North Face over the years. Most famously, I want to say 1967, but don't quote me on that mission that took two or three days to get a climber lowered down the face. They were pretty high up. So you know everybody. When we heard the call for a rescue on the north face of the Grand Teton, everybody's ears perked up and everybody kind of paused and was like, oh, it's game time.

Much as I hate to leave you on a cliffhanger, the amount of material we have for this episode is just too long for a single episode. So we split it into two. And the other half will be coming up in a week. And if you like this part of the episode so far, you're gonna love what comes up in a week. We're going to be talking about the rescue recovery, as well as interviews with some very important people in my life, including my wife Katie, including WCI staff and so make sure you tune in next week to hear the rest of this story. At this point, as you know, I'm unconscious, basically. Well, not unconscious, but asking the same question over and over again sitting on a ledge, hoping. Well, Christian was hoping anyway, that the cavalry was coming for me. And indeed they did come. And it's a pretty awesome story. So tune in next week to hear about that. In the meantime, thank you for supporting our sponsors. Our sponsor for this episode is SoFi. All right, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, SoFi is helping.

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Don't forget about this real estate webinar. It's coming up on the 12th of November. That's before you hear the rest of this episode. It's at 6pm Sign up whitecoatinvestor.com realestatewebinar I'm going to be talking about how to boost returns, lower your taxes, build your wealth. It's at 6pm Mountain time, but if you can't make it, we'll record it. We'll send it to you. Just sign up so we know to send it to you. We're not going to send it to everybody. Thank you. For those of you leaving us a five star review and telling your friends about the podcast, that really helps a great deal. You know, a recent one came in that said strong recovery 5 stars. Dr. Dali know that I we are hoping for a speedy strong recovery for you. The whole white coat investor platform has changed so many lives for the better and we're grateful for you and your team. Be well and stay encouraged. Well, thank you very much for that. I actually didn't see this until we were recording this episode a couple of months later. But we do appreciate your kind words as well as all of the emails I've received in the last couple of months which is many, many emails wishing me a rapid recovery. Thank you so much for all of and thank you for the five star reviews in particular. When you hear an episode that you think can help somebody, please, please, please send that to them. Not only does that help us spread the WCI message, but you're helping your friend, right? We are answering questions that lots of you have in these episodes and if you know somebody with these questions or these concerns, just send them a link to that episode. It's a great way to share what you're learning and all this good stuff with people that it can really benefit. All right, we'll see you next week where you get to hear the rest of the story. Until then, keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. See you next time on the White Coat Investor Podcast.

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