Fitness Fiasco
Fitness Fiasco
011 - Interview with Michael Silver (Rob's dad) p1 - Journey to the Himalayas
This is part 1 in what will be a multi-month interview with Rob's Dad - Mike.
Flashback to the 1970s as we embark on an extraordinary journey with Michael Silver, my dad and the first guest in our interview series. Imagine the thrill and audacity of putting your PhD studies on hold to join a mountaineering expedition with the Pittsburgh Explorers Club.
Michael recounts his decision to venture into the unknown, heading to Pakistan to tackle Nanga Parbat—one of the tallest and most daunting peaks, all without any prior mountaineering experience. This episode is filled with rich historical context, from the geopolitical climate of Pakistan to the logistical challenges of planning such an ambitious trip.
From the cultural shock of landing in Lahore to navigating the bureaucratic maze of securing permits in Rawalpindi, Michael paints a vivid picture of the journey. He shares anecdotes about key historical figures who played a role in facilitating their expedition, including the army's chief of staff, Zia-ul-Haq. As they traverse the Babusar Pass and interact with local villagers and Japanese climbers, the narrative delves into the gritty realities of mountaineering in a politically charged landscape. Michael’s reflections on significant political events, like Henry Kissinger's secret talks with China, add layers of intrigue and context to their adventure.
The episode crescendos with tales of high-altitude trekking, porters' strikes, and the sheer exhilaration of glimpsing Nanga Parbat's peak. Michael shares his thoughts on the extreme conditions of the Himalayas, known as the "death zone," and compares the majestic beauty of the Alps and the Rockies. This episode is a treasure trove of adventure, history, and personal reflection, offering a rare glimpse into the world of mountaineering through the eyes of someone who dared to dream big. Join us for an unforgettable adventure that showcases the awe-inspiring scale of the world's greatest mountain ranges.
Send us a voice note, check out show notes and more at our site: https://www.fitnessfiasco.com/
Host Mike - https://www.instagram.com/mikeosunafitness/
Host Erik - https://www.instagram.com/erikbustillo/
Host Rob - https://twitter.com/RobStrength
The Fitness Fiasco Podcast provides general information on health, wellness, and fitness and should not be regarded as professional medical advice, treatment, or diagnosis. No doctor/patient relationship is established through this podcast. Listeners are responsible for their use of any information or resources shared in this podcast or associated materials. This podcast's content should not supplant consultations with qualified health care professionals concerning any existing medical conditions. It is crucial for listeners to avoid disregarding or delaying professional medical advice based on the information provided in the podcast. Remember to consult your health care provider for personalized guidance on your health and wellness journey.
So welcome guys. Eric Mike, we have our first interview podcast, our first guest podcast, and it is going to be my dad, michael Silver.
Mike:Hello Love that.
Rob:Thank you for joining us.
Erik:That's it. Thank you for being here.
Rob:He has a lot of stories, many different topics that we can go down, but the topic that I want to focus the most on today is his adventures in pakistan in the 1970s and he has written up most of them and he'll talk to us about it. But it was he I don't want to spoil some of the good parts of it but basically, on a whim, ended up flying out to pakistan, didn't have a passport yet, hadn't been outside of north america, hadn't climbed any mountains, to do a reconnaissance trip up Nanga Parbat, which is the second tallest mountain in Pakistan. It is one of the top 20 in the world.
Mike:There's 14 peaks that are over 8,000 meters, which is a magic number, and they're all in the Himalayas. Nanga Parbat is number nine out of the 14.
Rob:so ninth tallest mountain in the world to do a reconnaissance trip. It wasn't to to summit it, unfortunately. Well, or fortunately yeah, or fortunately, and this was in the 70s, so a very different, very different world. So I think the first question I want to start off with what was the main drive to put down your PhD at the time and just jet off to Pakistan for a mountaineering trip that you never really mountaineered before?
Mike:Well, I wasn't really a deep member of the Pittsburgh Explorers Club. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time, going to the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School in Physics. But a lot of my friends were members of the Explorers Club and it had quite a history. It had started right after World War II like 1946, 1947, by at least one veteran I can't remember his name anymore and they had done a lot of things and they decided that for America's bicentennial, which was 1976, for those of you who have forgotten your civics lesson they would climb one of the tallest mountains in the world in celebration of America's bicentennial. Now, as it happened, there was this Pakistani living in Pittsburgh who several of them were friendly with, and they thought, well, having this person give them introductions to various officials in Pakistan might make going to Pakistan easier than going to Nepal, which is the other obvious place you would go, which?
Rob:for most mountaineering now that people see in the himalayas. And everest goes through nepal.
Mike:But nepal didn't really open to outsiders until well, in the 50s they were, they were open then but it was still.
Rob:It was a newer concept to go to nepal, to climb the himalayas, then pakistan or through china and tibet. Not really not at that point it was normalized yeah, it had been normalized In the 50s.
Mike:Nepal opened up. After all, hillary, when he climbed Everest was 53, with Tenzac Norgay, his Sherpa, and, by the way, many years before Tenzac Norgay had gone to Nanga Parbat with a group. And, yeah, most of Nepal opened up in the 50s. Pakistan as well. The one thing that kept it a little bit closed was Pakistan and India were continually fighting over a couple of the frontier provinces, namely Kashmir, and one or the other country would close the mountains that were close to that border, which included Nangarparbat and K2, or the two probably most well-known mountains in Pakistan, and they had just opened it up again like a year or two before we went to Mountaineers.
Mike:To go back to Pakistan, I don't quite remember the political, what was going on politically between India and Pakistan at that time. I remember Pakistan had a prime minister by the name of Ali Bhutta who was sort of Western in his orientation and his behavior. His daughter later became prime minister as well, benazir Bhutta, and she was assassinated some years later I can't remember the year. Yeah, so at that time Pakistan was a little bit more Western-oriented than it had been in the past under Bhutto, and that was the prime minister when we went. So it all made Pakistan a more obvious choice for our group than Nepal, and those are really the well. Bhutan has a mountain that's also in the 14 or less, or the 14 that are over 8,000 meters. But it's basically Pakistan's got several and Nepal's got most.
Erik:Now that you said that, I do want to throw something out there for those that may not know, and I had to look this up because I didn't know off the top of my head. So it's over 8,000 meters, you said right.
Mike:Correct.
Erik:Now that's over 26,000 feet, which is just about five miles. That's massive.
Rob:Correct and to put that in perspective, the tallest mountain in north america is denali, which he had summited a few years later, which is 21 000 20 320 so the tallest mountain in north america is 20 320 feet and all these that are over 8 000 meters are over 26 000 feet. It's's a different geography.
Mike:And they're all in that same arc of the Himalayas where the Indian plate hits the Eurasian plate, and up went the mountains.
Rob:And then that 8,000 meters up is what they call the death zone as well. If you look at the Everest climbing videos, where it's entering the death zone is 8,000 meters and over, and that's where lower oxygen concentrations make people do rash things. So you end up going to Pakistan.
Mike:Yes.
Rob:How was the journey to Pakistan?
Mike:Well, I guess it was my other than Canada, my first time outside the United States, so that always makes it interesting and I went by myself. Well, what happened is one of the people in this Explorers Club and there were 14 of them that ended up going to climb nangarpa about the year after we did our reconnaissance. Well, one of them had volunteered to do the reconnaissance, but he wanted somebody along with him. He was a good friend of mine in the physics department, um, but he couldn't talk anybody else in the club to go with him. They went down to the Andes and did some practice climbs, but he needed somebody. He just wanted somebody along and he had already had all his plane reservations and everything.
Mike:I couldn't get everything together. I didn't have a passport at the time. I got one real quickly, of course, otherwise I couldn't have gone at all and so I went, maybe three, four, five days after he went, and I met him in what were we? At Lahore? That's where we met up, in Lahore, which a major city in Pakistan, not the biggest Karachi's the biggest but Lahore is in what's called the Punjab, which is close to the Indian border, and Punjab means five rivers. There's five big rivers coming down from the Himalayas full of snow melt every year, and that's what Punjab means. It's the most populous and fertile of the provinces of India, and then Pakistan has its own Punjab, and so does India.
Rob:So that's what that name means, if you've heard it before the Punjab, the five rivers. So that was 50 years ago. But what do you remember from when you get off the plane in Pakistan and start looking around at your first not Western country?
Mike:Well, the plane, the international flights at that time, all went into Karachi, which is the biggest city in Pakistan it's not the capital or anything, and it's down in the southern part of Pakistan and I was supposed to exchange flights to go to Lahore. Well, my flight from New York to Pakistan was quite a bit delayed and so I missed my connection to Lahore. Well, my flight from New York to Pakistan was quite a bit delayed, and so I missed my connection to Lahore, and they put me up in a little hotel Looked like any hotel from the 50s you would find along US highways and yeah.
Mike:I basically snoozed a bit overnight and caught the plane the next day and didn't look so much different really, because you're in this motel hotel that looks similar to what you would see here at least maybe 20 years before in the 50s. You would see here at least maybe 20 years before in the 50s, and at that time now I understand there's a big military presence at all these airports, in these places. Not so much then.
Rob:So it wasn't a huge cultural shock, not until I got into Lahore itself, which what?
Mike:was the big cultural shock in Lahore. Well, basically I mean you know this before you go the massive poverty People I mean most of the population living in tents, I mean we have that problem now here in this country, but it's still a very small percentage of the overall population there. It's a large. It's like what you see of refugee camps today. That's the way most of the population was living, and the better neighborhoods of Lahore and any of the towns would have these compounds where the better off people lived and you're all walled off from the city. Everything pointed towards the inner courtyard and not out to the street.
Erik:I'm curious where were you living at that time?
Mike:I was in graduate school in Pittsburgh.
Erik:Okay, gotcha, and what were you going to grad school for?
Mike:Physics.
Erik:And did you end up finishing that? I did your.
Mike:PhD. Yes.
Erik:Okay, gotcha, and I actually had my career in that field as well In PhD. Yes, okay, gotcha.
Mike:And I actually had my career in that field as well.
Erik:In physics. Yes, I don't know how anyone does that, so I applaud you, I bow my head to you, because one class in physics alone is something A PhD in. That is its own category. That's amazing.
Rob:Yeah, a bit of a yeah different, uh, different, different hobbies for sure physics and mountaineering.
Mike:So then you, you met up with dan in lahore yeah, dan, was was one of the co-leaders of the expedition the following year, one of the the prime driver of organizing this and yeah, so his name is dan bunce. He was also a graduate student in the physics department. He was a much more serious mountaineer, since I had never done anything and I still don't consider myself anything like that, even though I live in the mountains now. But in colorado, um, yeah, yeah.
Rob:So we met up in lahore so then now, if you know someone in in the us, or even in in south america, I wanted to go mountaineering. Fly into a local airport, you can rent a a truck and go to get to a trailhead pretty, pretty quickly. How, how many steps were there from getting from lahore to up into the valley and to nangaparbha, which is one of the easier mountains to access too, I believe?
Mike:uh, nowadays it's easier because there's a highway there. That was not at that time. Uh, so I'm not sure why we met up in lahore. Probably because that's where. Well, because there's no government offices in lahore which we would have to deal with to get the permits to go to the mountains. Uh, so the steps, the steps were basically after he spent a few days in Lahore. Oh, I remember now why we went to Lahore.
Mike:The father of this gentleman, who lived in Pittsburgh, was in Lahore at the time. Some of his family lived there and he was one of these people they they call was there at independence. Uh, there's, there's this elder generation at that time. They're all gone now, but the generation of gandhi and nairu in india, and um, um, uh, what's the name? And the Pakistani guy, muhammad Ali, no, not Muhammad Ali. Um. Well, I apologize to anybody from Pakistan that's listening to this that I don't remember the name of your founder right now. Remember his picture, cause it was everywhere. But um, uh, but he was a member of that founding generation. He was, um, the head of head of the health department before the separation of India and Pakistan in 1948.
Mike:Mr Silver, you're correct, it's Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Mike:Jinnah, yeah, thank you. Chat GBT.
Mike:I'm the Jamie of the podcast. Try to help out.
Mike:Jinnah, yeah. So I mean he and Gandhi and Nehru were the three big pushers for independence. And then the separation as well. Gandhi really wanted to keep them together and Jinnah really wanted to be separate from India. And Pakistan means land of the pure in Urdu, which is the old language of the area. So just calling yourselves the land of the pure sort of makes you not want to be connected to another country where the religion is different. Of course India's getting its revenge now, but not to go into modern day politics. So from yeah, so he gave us. He wanted to give us a tour of the historical things to see in that part of Pakistan and he did this.
Mike:doctor, the father of this friend and he gave us. He was a wonderful tour guide, told us many stories. Remember we went by a coffee house oh, that's where revolution was plotted. And he was a wonderful tour guide, told us many stories. Remember we went by a coffee house, oh, that's where revolution was plotted, back in to kick the British out. So, and then we went to the capital city and it's a twin city Islamabad is the capital and that's a new planned city and Rallapindi is the old city.
Mike:That was there and Rallapindi was the old army, the center of the army, like the main army base, both in British days and the British raw and for the Pakistani government. But that's where we would have to go to get all our permits and find out what restrictions we'd have, if any. And so we spent a A good week, perhaps more than a week, dealing with the bureaucracy there. Now, many of them were very helpful, they wanted to be helpful, but it takes a while in a third world bureaucracy to get things done. And I think one of the interesting parts I remember is, because of our connection, this doctor I mentioned. He had given us a letter of introduction to the chief of staff of the army there. Name of ZL Hawk.
Mike:Check that out on me. Check that out on me. And he later ended up deposing the prime minister, who was this Bhutto that I had mentioned earlier, and actually ordering his death, and most of the Western countries of the world tried to get him to stop. He later died in a plane crash with the US ambassador on board and under mysterious circumstances that have never been explained, that I've, at least I've never found an explanation for. Maybe it was a pure accident, maybe it wasn't, but he sort of reinstituted Sharia law, or a version of Sharia law from the very western approach of Buddha to the more.
Rob:Well, I'll just call it Sharia law, you can decide label it as you wish so it was a very different Pakistan than in the 70s, than it is now, well, for example. So it was a very different.
Mike:Pakistan than in the 70s, in the 70s, than it is now. Well, for example, I'm Jewish and I had no problem there. I don't think a Jew could set foot in. Pakistan today.
Rob:And then, on that note, I remember you said there were two words that all the kids knew when you were walking around. Two phrases In English.
Mike:No matter how remote a town we went to, they would say American, you know, muhammad Ali, muhammad Ali, muhammad Ali, he's the greatest, and for kids in this part of the world to know Muhammad Ali, he must have been the greatest it just shows you how popular he was at that time, right. Yep, Yep exactly.
Rob:So from Lahore you go up to Nanga Parbat.
Mike:Well, from Lahore, we spent a couple of weeks in this twin town of Rallapindi Capital and Islamabad, and the two interesting things that I'll mention about that. We did go and visit the headquarters of the army in Rawalpindi because we had this letter of introduction to the chief of staff and while we didn't see the chief of staff, we saw his primary assistant. We got into his office and that's something I mean. I was in the army as a private. I never got into anybody's office of any sort. Here I am in in the office of of of the commander, the commander of the armies for Pakistan.
Mike:But anyway, I just found that amazing. And let's see, there was something else I wanted to mention. I'll get back to it when I remember it, because I'm almost the Trump and Biden's age.
Mike:You can be our president. It's a good benchmark.
Mike:I'm only a year younger than Trump. It's a good benchmark.
Rob:I'm only a year younger than Trump. How do you transport from Rathapindi to Nangaparbha?
Mike:All right. So we found a transportation company, or a travel agent, if you will, and it was one of the perhaps the only woman owned company in all of Pakistan, you know, a Muslim country, almost 100% Muslim and very rare, and so they arranged well, did you know the significance of that then, or was that more in hindsight?
Mike:than it was. No, no, we had been given her name, and so we met her and learned all this in real time. But the government, one of the restrictions the government put on us was not to travel alone but to travel with another expedition that was going there. But I think Miss Davis was no longer with us by this time, or Mrs Davis, and so we met up with them. We were staying in another hotel in Rallapindi. I think Mrs Davis's was the traditional place for Westerners, western adventurers, to stay. We had been given the name of another hotel, which we later learned was probably not the best place to stay when you're dealing with government agencies. It had a reputation for having a brothel upstairs, it sounds it the title itself the City Hotel.
Mike:Yeah, it sounds it the title itself.
Mike:The City Hotel.
Mike:Yeah.
Mike:But anyway, we never saw any evidence of it, but that's what we were told, so we met up with them.
Mike:The Japanese expedition, the Japanese expedition. They had rented a large truck, a lorry, and if you've ever seen, if you look through some of the pictures I have over there of the trucks in Pakistan, they're all gaily painted. And so, this very gaily painted truck, they loaded all their stuff, a little bit of our stuff, and then we had a van, a normal van, that we all went into Like I don't know what it was right now, and we took that from. Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah yeah.
Mike:Oh yeah.
Mike:Oh, they were all British trucks, they were all British manufactured trucks. I remember that Bedford, maybe, bedford, belford, belford, bedford is the name of the truck, the manufacturer of the truck company, the manufacturer of the truck company. And so we took this route into the mountains and it went through this town called Abbottabad, which had no significance to me at that time, but that is the town where Osama bin Laden hid out and was found and was also where Pakistan had its West Point. So that sort of implied to me that the Pakistani government knew where Osama bin Laden was. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but if their West Point is just down the street from where his compound was, here's a picture of a bus that has Bedford as a logo on the side.
Rob:So yes, you were right Bedford Yep.
Mike:The other interesting thing, that same sort of idea of Abbottabad being famous. Later, when we were in Islamabad, Rolopindi, we went to visit the US Embassy. It was our independence. In fact, it was over July 4th. Unfortunately, I had gotten heat stroke and I was in a hospital, which is another great story. I think it was heat stroke, they thought it was malaria, the doctors.
Mike:So Dan went to the July 4th at the embassy and I had been to the embassy earlier in the week and maybe later. I went to the embassy again earlier in the week and maybe later. I went to the embassy again and it's way on the outskirts of Islamabad, like two miles from the rest of the government, things right at the very edge of the city. They were building, and then a few years later, there was a problem at the main mosque in Mecca, which the Saudi government blamed on the US, and so there was a mob that attacked the US embassy in Pakistan and burned it down.
Mike:I mean, it was a brick building, but a couple of people were killed, I think a couple of the rioters and a couple of maybe a Marine defender and a couple of the Pakistani employees, not a small handful. But from my experience I knew the Pakistani government said there was nothing they can do. This was a spontaneous riot and and we couldn't get any police protection there in time or army protection there in time. Well, I knew how far it was from everything else in Islamabad and I knew it would take quite a while to march all these marchers down there. So I knew that was a lie. Whatever it was, something the Pakistani government wasn't coming uh, completely truthful about. This is what happens when you have local information, even though it's so, not rare, I would call it, but such a happenstance and you just happen to be to the embassy.
Mike:You knew it was far from town, so if there was a bunch of rioters there, that it was organized and it took a while to get there. So anyway, that was uh. So we took the uh, our, our um van, with, with the, with the japanese climbing club, and our uh and ourselves and our truck, and we went as far as the paved road would go and at that time we transferred into Jeeps and the Jeeps were all Toyota's versions of Land Cruisers and we took the Jeeps for a day or two up this valley called the Kagan Valley. It is a place where, a few years ago, the Taliban tried to foment a lot of trouble and fought the army. The Pakistani army finally crushed the Taliban there. It was okay for them to be in afghanistan and do their thing, but not okay even though the pakistani armed forces and secret services were the main backers of the taliban. But only in another country, not in ours, um, which I think know growing up hearing some of these stories.
Rob:That is another, just another thing detailing how unique of a time it was in a place to be when you were able to be in Pakistan, in those valleys at that time, being Jewish, being a small expedition from America.
Mike:And another. Well, two other interesting things. My jacket that I wore because in the mountains it's going to get a little chillier, was my old Army field jacket from when I was in the Army, with my name tag still on it. I think I took off. I did take off the US Army name tag on it, but that's kind of stupid in retrospect on a country that well, at that time, as I said, buddha had a Western orientation and Kissinger was actually in the country when we were there.
Mike:Henry Kissinger, our Secretary of State I don't know if he was Secretary of State yet Is he 76? Yeah, he was Secretary of State, I think, of State yet Is he 76? Yeah, he was Secretary of State, I think, and he was at that time setting up secret talks with China so Nixon could go to. Now Nixon was Let me get this straight Now Nixon was gone by then. So one of his setting up some trips between US high officials and self with China, he did through Pakistan and he was in Pakistan while we were there. So, yeah, completely different vibe then. So we took the Jeeps as far as we could and then it was walking. We went up through something called Babassar Pass in the Jeeps and down the other side. Babassar Pass was 14,000 to 16,000 feet, which is as tall as anything in continental United States, as tall as any of our mountains, but that's just the pass States.
Rob:As tall as any of our mountains, but that's just the pass. Which tallest mountain in the continental US is Mount Whitney at 14,300, 400 feet, california Right.
Mike:So down on the other side, on the other side of Babassar Pass. I think Babassar Pass means Pass of the Tiger, because when the Mughals came in in the 15-1600s, came down from the north and took over northern India, pakistan region. They're the people that built the Taj Mahal and a lot of other famous things. The very first one supposedly came down through Babasar Pass. He came down with his army, so we were going the reverse way and when we got down to the first village on the other side, there was hundreds of people milling about because the government had ordered the men in the area be made available to haul the Japanese equipment to the mountain. Japanese had everything and I think most expeditions do the same thing had everything in boxes that two feet by three feet by two feet, something like that, and the rule, one of the rules, regulations, was no box could be heavier than oh, I don't remember, it's in there somewhere, but they were pretty heavy. It wouldn't be anything I'd want to carry and I had a pack, you know, a backpack. They're not as nice as they are today, but uh.
Mike:And then we started our, our, uh, our hike, in our trek in um, we had to sign in. All all the what were called porters had to sign in. We were also introduced to a couple of high-level well, I wouldn't say high-level Pakistanis, but not porters. There was our climbing porter. The name was Ashraf Aman, who I've kept in touch with ever since Hopefully, I with ever since, hopefully. It's been four years since I've had anything from him, so I hope he's okay.
Mike:And also, the government has a liaison officer connected with you and we had met him back in Rallapindi and had gone to his home for a farewell feast. This was to be his big adventure before he got married and settled down. He was a major in the army and that. But you always get somebody to go with each expedition a liaison officer. Go with each expedition, a liaison officer and he was very good. He was very good. He had been in the war.
Mike:I don't know if you know any of this, but Pakistan used to have two geographic locations. There's West Pakistan, which is what we call Pakistan today, and there was an East Pakistan, which we now call Bangladesh. But it was one country back then and they fought a war to separate except India's in between. So India went on the side of Bangladesh and he became a prisoner of war. He was hospitalized. Anyway, he finally was repatriated back to West Pakistan Major Malik, that was his name, major Malik and off we walked.
Mike:Major Malik had a friend of his. He brought along the Japanese had, I think it was about a dozen. Their medical person was a nurse, miss Koga. It was the only female along Of the Japanese that were there. The only one we really got to know a little bit better was the climbing leader. He and Dan sort of really meshed well because they were both climbers, but it was a six-day hike and all these passes we had to cross a bunch of passes and they're all like 14,000 feet. I think we had on foot, I think, two, maybe two major passes we went over, if I look in that quickly I could find it.
Mike:but that's all right, we'll leave it at two. And if it was three, all right. And on the maybe even three passes, I remember the next to last pass, the second, yeah, the next to last pass. We got up there and in the distance it's all cloudy. You really couldn't see anything. And one of the porters started pointing way, way, way in the distance and there you could see a little bit of nanga parbat, the snowfield, shining through the clouds.
Mike:I mean way up there I mean, we're whatever, we were 14 000 feet or so, and so you're looking for mountains. You're used to something that would be. It's the same level you are, but here's this mountain. That's still quite far away, and to see the summit you had to tilt your head back.
Rob:And now You're at 14,000 feet and the peak is at 26,000, which you can almost say is 28, which is almost double. If you're on the top of the tallest mountains in Colorado or California, down to the sea level is 14,000 feet. You have to double that, so you're basically we're at the equivalent of sea level, looking up to the top top of the highest California Sierra Nevada mountains.
Mike:And then, as we got closer to Nongar Parbat, a couple of the stream crossings. Well, the rivers are really flowing, the streams are really flowing coming down from the snow fields around Nangarparbat, and some of those crossings were a little hairy. The bridges, just a log that wasn't so well built, well put in. In fact, one got washed away. One of the crossings got washed away while we were in the mountains so couldn't go back that way. So I think it was a six-day march in, and about a day, maybe two days. Well, let me back up a little bit. Every night, when we'd reach camp, the porters would go on strike. I mean, this is the only. I mean I don't blame them, this is their only chance to make money and they're going to try to make money however they can. So I mean it really gets the people running the expedition Dan in our case, and the Japanese and Mr Malik, major Malik ticked off, because every night they would have to put down this strike and promise them something Either lighten even though that had been agreed to before lighten the loads, or more money, mainly more money.
Mike:And then, two days out from Nangar Parbat, this other group of men came and said we're the ones that haul all the equipment from here into Nangar Parbat.
Mike:You other guys get out of here, and so there's a bit of fisticuffs and some of the men you know it's like the US, they carry their weapons openly, but none of those weapons were ever used, thankfully Few rocks, few sticks, a lot of verbiage, and this other group then took over. Well, the head of that group was the village head of the last village before Nanga Parbat, and his name was Sir Kunder, the last village before Nanga Parbat, and his name was Sarkandar. Now, if you think about Sarkandar, what it sounds like, can you imagine that it's derived from Alexander. His claim is that his people and they were lighter skinned are descendants from Alexander the Great's army and Alexander the Great's army this is about the limit of what they got to Right around this part of Pakistan and so they claim they were descendants of the Greeks. All right, his name is Secunder and that means Alexander. So that was pretty cool getting this connection to ancient history.
Rob:Now they can do a genetic analysis and see.
Mike:Oh yeah, that's true.
Rob:If the villagers would want to, or just continue to claim it.
Mike:Yeah, so with Sircunder's village men, and they didn't. It was a small village, they didn't have really enough porters, so they had to do double carries. We finally got to what is used as the base camp of Nangarparbat on the western side, which is called the Daimir flank, used in climbing the original climb back in 1954 by germans. Uh is the north side and uh, the man who first summit is the name named by the name of herman buell, and he ended up dying later that year or the next year. He came back to do another peak nearby and perished and he did a solo push from the upper camp that the Germans had and he did a solo push all the way to the top of Nangar Parbat and back, which is considered one of the most outstanding feats in mountaineering. That solo push, that's the north side. Solo push, that's the north side. The north side was closed to us because the Chinese asked Pakistan not to make it available, because the Chinese were going to put in a highway connecting western China to Pakistan and the route would go right by the base there. So that was the old way in this road on the north side. The Silk Road yeah, a modern Silk Road I don't know if the old Silk Roads ever went that route. It could have been, because there were a number of Silk Roads.
Mike:We get to the base camp and we help. The Japanese were following the playbook of another German expedition some years before 10 years before and they were putting all their camps where they put. The Germans had written about exactly where they did, everything and whatnot, and we found a lot of evidence of german trash around, cans of low and brow on the mountain. Um, well, what dan and I ended up doing one day? We hauled up to the first camp that's actually on the mountain. You have base camp and camp one is up on the mountain and we hauled some of the Japanese just as a thank you for letting us be there. We hauled some of their stuff up and um, so that's the first time I did any serious mountaineering, because there was some treacherous parts on that first part and Dan told me what to do and I did it and I'm here to tell about it Didn't fall in a crevasse, and what elevation is base camp?
Mike:Base camp. I'm going to guess this is about 16. And the first camp up on the mountain. You have to cross where the glacier comes down. So you have to cross the glacier and then you go up a scree slope which is like a bunch of ball bearings with the ice underneath, maybe 1,000 feet up. It wasn't that dramatic.
Mike:How physically challenging was hiking specifically there between base camp and Camp 1? Well, the hardest hiking was actually on the hike in. It just seemed forever to get to a pass. It always looked like a false summit. Oh, there's a summit right there and you get there. Oh no, it's still going and still going. Just because of of your view and your angle, you think you're getting to the summit. But so the hardest hiking was actually there and I I carried my backpack. I didn't have that much weight in it but it was still probably 40 pounds, probably close to 40 pounds, just to get into shape. And I was told later by the cook, one of the Pakistani people, and this is all in Panamine, and this is all in Panamine. But he later told me the way I understood it, because you were carrying your pack when you could have had one of the porters carry your pack, we assumed you had all the money. That didn't make me feel so good when they were having a strike every night, but I didn't find this out until several days later.
Erik:You mentioned a cook, and I can't help but think what the eating circumstances were like. What would you eat, how often, and also, how would you maintain hydration? Was there any sort of salt that you would add, or tablets, or anything like that?
Mike:Electrolytes were not known back then. Our water source was a stream coming down from the side and then we'd purify it mainly by boiling the water. But a side stream not the mainstream coming down where the well there's a tongue of the glacier fills half the valley and the other side is rock and dirt and grass, and so we had to cross over the glacier to get into the valley. So the glacier is right alongside of us really, as opposed to in front of us. It's also in front of us, but it's also on our side. Do in front of us. It's also in front of us, but it's also on our side, and it's melting and there's water running down the bottom of it, but it's all full of rocks and stuff. But one of the side streams coming down from a snow field on one of the ridges on the side is where we get our water.
Mike:Food we had a lot of freeze-dried food. Let's see, I'm trying to think what the Japanese because we ate with the Japanese I'm trying to remember what they brought in. I just can't remember what they carried beside freeze-dried, because that's what you're going to have on the mountain. I do know that one of the local villagers who had a rifle went up into the ridges and came back with a goat and we ate that goat and I must admit it was very good.
Mike:You're eating food at that point.
Rob:Roasted it.
Mike:Cajacina style. Yeah, that goat is uh roasted it cajina style, yeah like so, rob, you had mentioned that he took this.
Mike:He filled the spot when your friend asked, when dan asked you to join him, correct? And so this is short notice you had your passport right, right, what gave you the confidence? What were you doing at the time, physically fitness wise, to give you the confidence to? What were you doing at the time, physically fitness-wise, that gave you the confidence to say, yeah, I could go climb, you know, do some recon on a mountain halfway across the world?
Mike:No, I was completely not trained at all. Really, I didn't do any. I think I walked around the track at the university a few times.
Mike:Right, as you're taking a break from your doctorate in physics.
Mike:Yeah, no, I didn't do. I mean, I had done a little bit of backpacking. I had taken up backpacking, maybe one or two years before before, and I was pretty good at walking with weight on my back, more so than some of the guys that were bigger than me. So I don't know, I didn't do any training. I hadn't done any training. So I'm sorry. Your business is completely irrelevant.
Rob:I'm gonna edit this part out so to to go trekking in the Himalayas. You don't need electrolytes you don't need fancy nutrition.
Mike:You don't need prior training just go, you just need to be good at walking with weight on your back I had a friend of mine that just did kilimanjaro and she trained for six months leading up to kilimanjaro and it's not nearly as high as no, it's not as high.
Mike:But that's a pretty cold spot to 19,000, almost 20,000 feet. Yeah, I almost think that I can hike better in these last five, six years than I could ever hike back when I was in my 30s, 20s, 30s, 40s, because I do it all the time now. I guess the lesson is doing it, just do it.
Mike:Yeah, the power of youth, right Like your mid-20s.
Mike:Right, let's see what was it? I was 28, I think when I went to Nonger Parbat 28, I think when I went to Nonger Parbat.
Rob:How many from Camp 1 did you go above Camp 1? I did not, so that was the highest. You made it on this trip, correct? Did you spend any?
Mike:nights there. No, we spent a night at what we called the depot, the night at what we called the depot. So base camp was a mile or two before the foot of the mountain, and so we put a depot right at the foot of the mountain.
Rob:Was that for avalancherists to be that further away, or just?
Mike:I'm not sure I mean I thought about that. You know why back there. Well, the water was a little easier to get, the ground was a little bit flatter. It wasn't flat, but it was flatter, so a little bit easier to set up camp. It's where the Germans had always set up camp because they had tried to climb Nangarpurabhat. They had a history of climbing Nangarpurabhat back in the 30s and then the 50s and into the 60s, so it was always called the German mountain.
Mike:Well, everest was the British mountain and Annapurna, which was the first 8,000-meter peak climb, was by the French, so that was the French mountain. And K2, the second highest mountain, was first climbed by the Italians, so it often is called the Italian mountain. So just from the first people, germany had a long history and climbers from Germany of trying to climb Nagra Perbat. And yeah, I won't go into it because they lost a lot of climbers, they lost a lot of Sherpers in the 30s. There were two bad attempts in the 30s with storms and bad accidents. So we would have been the first. The Japanese would have been the first Japanese to make it to the summit. They did not make it to the summit and the following year, when the rest of the group went. We would have been the first Americans up there, but we did not as well.
Rob:It's challenging to make it to the top of these mountains. It's a lot of exposure. It's challenging to make it to the top of these mountains.
Mike:It's a lot of exposure. One of the problems with the Himalayas, more so than, let's say, denali, because Denali is far north, it's cold, it doesn't avalanche as easily, avalanches easily. Himalayas are really on the same elevation as central florida on up, and it's a big arc, so the eastern end of the arc is probably remember when I was in nepal and I called you and you said oh, you're the same latitude as point de verde, florida or something.
Rob:Yeah, so, um the same latitude as Pointe Verde, florida or something. Yeah, yeah, so it's the monsoon. The monsoons dominate the Himalayan weather and the climbing seasons.
Mike:Exactly, and it's wet and it makes the snow and it gets warm. It gets cold and it gets warm, so it makes avalanche. They're much more avalanche prone, especially Nanga Parbat, so that's what really makes them dangerous.
Rob:And smaller climbing windows generally because of the you have to go after winter but before the monsoons. Now people climb year round, but they're the crazy ones.
Mike:Yeah, the main climbing season in the Himalayas is pre-monsoon, which was typically May, and that's when most people attempted, and then October, november, before it gets too cold. Now I'm going back, not so much as you say today, but as it was before a whole mess of global warming, which has probably made things a lot different.
Rob:So then you start to come back, or is there any stories from when you were up at base camp that are worth recollecting now?
Mike:Well, one story is our first time we went from base camp to the, to the depot, that's to the foot of the mountain. That two mile stretch, it took us forever. And then, after doing it two or three times and we could almost run it, we could almost run it which?
Rob:is two miles at 15,000 feet, 16,000 feet elevation. You adapt.
Rob:Let me check something but that's also how, that's also why current expeditions not the super serious ones who are trying to do it as sprints, but they'll. You go to base camp. You go up to camp one, spend a couple nights at camp one. Go back to base camp. Then you go base camp up to camp one, up to camp two, couple nights at camp one, go back to base camp. Then you go base camp up to camp one, up to camp two, couple nights at camp two and come back and it's just this continuing laddering up and down, up and down, up and down, to slowly acclimatize, and then finally you work your way up and from the top camp try to summit because typically the distance between one camp and the other is a beast more in elevation it's more on elevation, yeah and finding a good, a good place for for the camp.
Rob:But you know, it's if base camps at at 15, which I think what ever space camps about the same height, it's not that much higher 14, 15, 16, right, it's a little higher, a little higher, but the top's at 28 and currently there are four camps. There's base camp, camp one, two, three and four, and then from four you go up to summit and then it's from 16 to 28 000. So 12 000 feet every 3 000 feet, every four, three or four thousand feet, you have a a camp and how?
Mike:how long do people typically stay at these base camps? Is it just like an overnight stop, or you're there just to get acclimated to the weather and let's go well?
Mike:there's. There's a number of people that stay at the base camp that are just there to support the climbing memory. You know, not everybody in an expedition may be a climber. Sometimes they are especially the smaller ones. But on bigger ones you'll have a health officer, you'll have the cook, you'll have maybe nowadays a radio operator or something up to the satellites up there, operator or something up to the satellites up there. I'm just looking here. I see Camp 1 was at about 5,000 meters, so that's 16,400 feet. So that's Camp 1. So base camp would have been lower around 15,000 feet.
Rob:All right, there's a lot more to the story, but I know we're reaching a hard stop on this episode today, but you'll be back in October before you venture down to Patagonia at age for more hiking, all right I can stop it there then, and we can continue on in a few months.
Mike:Thank you so much, that was very interesting, and we can continue on.
Erik:Thank you so much In a few months. Very interesting, yeah, yeah, truly, because I think about like I'm from Miami and I go to Colorado and I go upstairs and I'm like trying to catch my breath.
Mike:I just think about higher than anywhere in Colorado, jess and I went to the Red Rock to watch Old Dominion and we're going upstairs and we're like we're in pretty good shape here and we were struggling. We'd have to stop every now and then at some of the foundations because we just couldn't make it up there. So I can't imagine what it's like to even just get the base camp.
Erik:For sure. That's where the acclimation process is used too.
Rob:I think the scale of some of the larger mountain ranges in the world is just something that's so tough to comprehend until you're there. I remember going the first times to the Alps because the Alps are from the base of the Alps to the top of the Alps is so much more than anything in the Rocky Mountains. It's just growing up. In the US we're used to the Rocky Mountains being the primary mountains that we see and a lot of mountain ranges out there are a lot bigger and it's frightening.
Mike:Yeah, the top of the Alps is very similar to the top of the Rockies, but the base is like 10,000 feet less than the base of the Rockies, so it makes them look almost Himalayan in scale.
Rob:Wow, All right, good stuff, good work.
Mike:Thank you, thanks for work, thank you.
Erik:Thanks for coming, thanks for being here.
