Tragedy on the Haute Route: A Conversation with Steve House

01:02.70
Steve
Welcome friends. My name is Steve house and you are in the house with Steve House tonight and this is episode number one of this little podcast series where the spirit of this is going to be cracking open a beer and sitting around and having some real talk about mountains in the mountain community and the things that affect our lives. So tonight I’m joined by Alyssa Clark for the inaugural episode, welcome Alyssa. Thanks for everything you do to make this happen.

01:33.31
Alyssa
Yeah I am really excited about this series Steve you and I have a lot of conversations kind of off the podcast and you certainly know just a few people in the mountain world and we really just wanted to bring these conversations to others and just share a lot of your experiences other people’s experiences and just have the chance to have a fun conversation on the air off the air in the house out of the house. So I apologize and advance my voice I’m coming back from a case of laryngitis. My voice is a little different than usual but we’re just going to go with it. So Steve what are we talking about today?

02:18.66
Steve
Well I’m going to start a little tradition right now and I know that it’s more coffee time where you are and more beer time where I am but that’s going to probably be the case most of the time. I’m in Austria I’m going to open a different beer every time we do this and tonight it is a beer called and I just got to try to say this because this word has like 57 letters in it fisanheligenner beer. So. I think it’s like the for-toothed holy place beer or something like that somebody can help me translate that out there. So that’s going to be my companion for this journey and what we are going to talk about is. Well, it’s actually I think what we’re actually going to talk about is responsibility for ourselves out in the mountains and the conversation tonight is is brought about by the recent release a few days ago of a film that I was involved in, called Todesfalle Haute Route which translates to death trap haute route which was a film that was made by a gentleman named Frank Senn and it was produced by the national television of Switzerland and it’s aired in Switzerland and the german-speaking areas Germany and and Austria right now. It’s only available in german but they’re working on english translations and plan to roll it out to other countries and all of the film festivals and stuff the rest of this year and I know this I sent you a link to the Youtube version. It’s a 90 minute film and you can watch it using the settings and auto-generated subtitles and that’s what you did and yeah, what were your just top line impressions of the film and what I know it brought up a bunch of questions we’re going to get into those but what was your overall impression.

04:29.72
Alyssa
Yeah, it’s pretty easy to watch honestly even with it being in a different language if you speak english, it was funny seeing you dubbed over I was like no but I understand Steve don’t dub him over.

04:40.53
Steve
Yeah.

04:45.33
Alyssa
But I would say it’s a really well-put-together film because it does a great job of weaving interviews with kind of reenactments and then like visuals of the area et cetera. So it does a great job of telling the story but also bringing in perspectives through the interviews so I was really captivated. It captivated me the whole time. I think that it shows a lot about how complex it is to be a human and especially to be a human in a setting where we know it’s challenging to exist and also how we trust each other. I actually think that the final piece of the movie which I think as we can use as somewhat of a framing mechanism. Asking these 3 questions was it bad luck, human error or carelessness and I think those 3 questions really tie the whole movie together and also frame a lot of what we do in the mountains and how we navigate that. But before we’ve kind of jumped a little bit, but Steve do you want to give us a little bit of background about what was the death trap. What is the haute route. So that we can frame it for those who haven’t seen the movie?

06:14.47
Steve
Absolutely yeah, I want to do that and I want to explain my involvement too. So this goes back to 2018 and many of you will know that I have been a mountain guide in my former life I started mountain guiding as an apprentice mountain guide in 1991 as a 20 year old working in the north cascades. It’s mostly on Mount Baker and I want to tell some stories about that someday. But that’s for another time and I have you know considered mountain guiding my profession for most of my adult life and I have really retired from guiding particularly let’s say around 2017 I really phased out of guiding and I have some very close and deep relationships with some of the people that I have guided many times over the years and 2 of these individuals Rowan and OJ had been hounding me to go do the haute route with them.

07:40.27
Steve
And I had in my guiding career I had always avoided guiding routes like the haute route not because it’s not a beautiful tour. It is in fact, a beautiful tour. It is that I have in my career been in so many situations on these climbing routes and skiing routes around the world that are popular that I’ve ended up having to be in situations where I was in the role of the rescuer and not that I was unwilling to be the role of the rescuer. But I also have been around in the mountains enough and throughout the world to know there are a lot of places out there to ski and climb that aren’t crowded and don’t have lots of people in them. I think it’s important to frame that up for a couple of reasons. One, it was my first time guiding the haute route or skiing the haute route had never been on it in my life. This point you know I’m forty eight years old 47 years old I’m mostly retired from mountain guiding. But when I do guide I take it very seriously and I’ve survived a lot of adventures and the mountains due to that approach. I feel like the haute route is for those that don’t know or are familiar. The haute route is a ski traverse that starts in Chamonix and ends in Zermatt and typically takes you know, roughly a week. It’s been done multiple times under 24 hours but most people do it in a week and you stay in in a series of huts. There’s a variety of huts. There’s different ways to break it up. There’s different little variations and all kinds of things that you can do but that’s basically the frame and Rowan and OJ and I scheduled ourselves the 3 of us to do this the classic way in March of 2018. So we met in Chamonix. We did the very all the classic things which is the first day you go up the aiguille du midi and you ski the valet blanche which is a very wise thing to do because it gets you up at altitude a little bit and just it gets kind of a gear check and allows you stay in chamonix another night and the next day you got the grand montets. And you ski a very short section down from the grand montets up the glacier a little bit to the hut the next day this is where I this is where I have to pull up my maps I remember all the name place names the next day. Sorry.

10:44.87
Alyssa
I think it must have been in April I think it was it in April he said march.

10:54.61
Steve
I think it was let me check. Yep, it was in April.

10:56.91
Alyssa
Yeah, just to okay, all good. It’s all like you’ve never you know, just a few trips that you’ve guided. Yeah.

11:07.74
Steve
Right? It is a yeah so we did it in April and actually it looks like I can tell you that we started on April twenty fourth so it was actually late April so we did the classic route from the you know Argentière hut to the trient hut then the next day you ski down to champex-lac and you usually get a taxi there. Go over to Verbier and go up to the ski area a little bit. We stayed at the Cabane du Mont-Fort from there. We skied to the Cabane de Prafleuri and I’m sketching these out because these names are important in the story. The next day we went from the Prafleuri to the Cabane des dix. And then the next stage from there is the Cabane des Vignettes and from there to Zermatt. So I want to back up a little bit and just sort of lay out the story. What happened for us is the the day that we arrived at the Cabane de Prafleuri we met an old friend of mine who was a french mountain guide and he was with 3 guests who were 2 french women and her Spanish boyfriend.

12:42.10
Steve
And now husband and they have a child together and his a friend of his so the 3 of 4 of them were skiing together and the French guide he is in the film Simon.

12:58.74
Alyssa
The French guide.

13:05.88
Alyssa
Not really, he just see one. Okay.

13:12.79
Steve
Simone was guiding these guys and I had climbed with Simone in the past and we hadn’t seen each other in a while just kind of one of those we weren’t close friends but one of those random like bump into an old friend thing and the mountains’s always fun right? So this is important this day because two important things happen one is that there is a really big storm forecast for about roughly two days from this time and two, we met Simon who is a friend of mine who’s a very accomplished mountain guide. He’s a professional mountain rescue crew on the mont blanc Massif, an incredible climber and so the next then we skied that day from the Cabane de Prafleuri to the Cabane des dix and this is an important day because it’s mostly just a, I would call it a transit day. You don’t do a whole lot of skiing you do quite a bit of flat skinning and you have to traverse around this huge lake this huge reservoir and we got to the Cabane des dix and it’s also important to realize that there’s no internet service if no cell service of any kind. It’s actually quite a bit of the haute route is no cell service which is part of this story as well and from the Cabane des dix.

14:47.67
Steve
There is cell service there and there was a weather forecast and so we were all aware that there was this bad weather forecast and we checked and confirmed that at the Hut it was still the forecast. We didn’t really know that they seemed to be really off all over the place with the timing when you checked the different forecasts. The timing wasn’t too good so without kind of going into the story I think that just kind of sets up the scene of how we kind of came to be at the Cabane des dix. And sorry for all the clicking noises.

15:32.71
Alyssa
I think that helps set it up I was actually just pulling this up as well to make sure that I was remembering names of it I mean this is a super famous ski tour.

15:39.81
Steve
Yeah, no.

15:49.12
Alyssa
Just like one of such a classic route in this area. So for those who haven’t seen the movie. So Steve takes his group. You meet up with Simon and there’s another group. Um, led by an Italian guide named Mario. Oh yeah, okay, go for it.

16:09.56
Steve
Let me tell this part actually yeah because I think it’s important to frame this up sorry to interrupt you but I think it’s important to frame up how we came up.

16:19.47
Alyssa
No I more just wanted to know like if you even had run into him like if there was any interaction before any of this came That’s more my question. Yeah, no go for it.

16:26.38
Steve
Yeah, so this I, and I want to get there but I guess my question I feel like I’ve just been talking a long time and I wonder if people are tired of me talking by now. Okay in the house all right? So once I check.
16:36.76
Alyssa
This is your in the house.

16:46.50
Steve
You know we checked the forecast of the Cabane des dix so we had lunch and Simone and I were pretty concerned because the weather forecast was really bad for the next day like this storm with massive massive winds like you know literally they’re forecasting hurricane-force winds like you know 200 kilometer plus an hour so one hundred and twenty hundred and twenty five mile hour winds and you know this is the haute route like you’re at a high elevation the whole time you’re up on big glaciers and the next day is literally the high point of the whole tour you go over the Pigne d’Arolla which you know is about twelve thousand four hundred feet little less than four thousand meters if I remember right. So it’s also one of the most exposed sections of the tour. So we’re very concerned about this storm that has been forecast basically for a week at this point. We were out of data for a night now we’ve got confirmation the forecasts as we get closer to the storm are of course a little more accurate but the timing is when you look at the different models is still a little bit all over the place.I talked in my conversations with Simone. He tells me that two weeks earlier he had done a heli ski trip that he guided where they flew in a helicopter to the top of the Pigne d’Arolla and then skied down back to the town.

18:20.77
Steve
On that side of them on the Swiss side of the Pigne d’Arolla which is called Arola not surprisingly enough and so I said to him like okay you and this is really important. He had a Gps track on his Gps device and on his phone. From that descent to just two weeks before so I said to him okay I’m going to skin up to the top right now and it was you know its lunch. It was like noon like we got you know it was a pretty easy sort of stage of the tour to get there not a lot of elevation gain felt good I was fit and I said I’m just going to skin up there it’s good visibility now there’s good weather I’m going to go up there I’ll go there by myself. It’s a good track I’ll be back in like 3 hours so I did that I took myself up there and just and just went super light. Took a thermos I actually took a can of coke I remember that I took a can of coke and some a chocolate bar or something and skinned up to top the Pigne d’Arolla I actually found the steaks that he had told me about that were the landing stakes with little flags for the helicopter pilots and he said that’s where his gps track began from and I saw that I looked down the other side of the Pigne d’Arolla drank my coke and skied back down I was back relatively quickly. Three hours later or something and the whole point of that was to first of all familiarize myself with it but mostly to get the Gps track in so I had that and this is essentially how I came into this film project because the next day turned out to be and the next night turned out to be very dramatic and tragic for a lot of people.

20:28.98
Steve
So that was I believe April twenty eighth it could have been April twenty ninth and then the next day you know the forecast hadn’t really been updated. Now we’re like basically less than 24 hours out from the storm and everyone in the hut knows the storm is coming. It’s everyone’s talking about it. But as is typical in these huts on the haute route. There’s a lot of people like there’s I don’t remember I mean I couldn’t tell you how many people the hut was full so it was in excess of a hundred people. It might have been one hundred and fifty people like every area where people sit and eat and drink and stuff in the evenings was full of people. There’s a lot of energy. Everybody was very nervous. You could feel it and our goal was really really simple Simone and I decided we were going to join forces and move our teams over the Pigne d’Arolla to the vignette and because the storm while it was forecast to be very fierce. It was forecast for the next mostly the next afternoon and night and we thought we could beat the storm to the Cabane des Vignettes, the Vignettes hut and then it was supposed to be over. It was only going to be like 12 hours and then we could complete our tour to Zermatt. We didn’t really talk to anyone else in the hut and not really, we literally didn’t talk to anyone else in the hut we were just our own little group. We were whatever 7 people we kind of had our own table. We kind of hung out together. We were a group whose common language was english we were probably at least as far as I recall only kind of english language group there. There was you know obviously there’s a lot of swiss so they’re speaking german and they’re speaking french and and all these different languages. So this is really important because you know the next morning we woke up and we briefed our group.

22:56.47
Steve
Very strictly on what was going to happen like all the responsibilities like we took them through our whole thought process and Simone and I were very prepared. I had a Gps on my phone or you know the Gps app on my phone I had a big backup battery that could charge my phone 2 or 3 times. I had a Garmin Gps a handheld Garmin gps with two brand new lithium batteries I had two more brand new lithium batteries to back those up I had a paper map I had a compass I had a Gps watch. But the only thing I didn’t have was an analog altimemeter that I know but I had like backups for the backups for the backups basically and everybody felt we proposed this plan to the group as guides and said this is what we think we need to do this is how we’re going to succeed. This is how we’re prepared and what do you guys think what do you want to do because we gave them the option to we said we could also go out over the I think that its called the Pas des Chevres. And then we can like you know make it a variation to the tour and we avoid the high peak but it’s the safer thing and we decided as a team as a group to stick to the classic itinerary and that’s what we did. So yeah, we were the first out of the hut.There was a bunch of people kind of leaving at the same time and we were the first to the top of the Pigne d’Arolla. There were some other people that were a little bit behind us like 30 minutes behind us. But we never talked to them and everyone was kind of we were just in our zone and simone and I were really focused on our group and keeping our group together and moving and being efficient and making sure we minimize transitions. It was really serious like we were kind of strict with them like this is a big deal. We can do this but we have to be really like tight here. You know there’s no room for error but everyone in the group was very experienced as a ski tour and there was nothing particularly challenging about the skiing or anything that was challenging for any of these people so that’s what we did. We I believe if I remember right, that we got to the the Pigne d’Arolla and then we got to the vignette hut from the Cabane des dix in 4 hours and 48 minutes to be exact as I’m looking it up here and we left at six forty-five am so we were back at the hut at like whatever 5 hours, roughly 5 hours later so we were at the hut. That’s what I recall what I wanted to say is we were at the hut before noon and on top of the Pigne, the visibility was shutting down. It was getting a little windy but it wasn’t uncomfortable by any means it was actually warm typical for these kinds of storms. It was warm and when we skied down it was pretty bad visibility. So actually we just all snowplowed and side slipped in a tight group like literally 1 right behind another because it wasn’t about skiing and whooping it up and having fun turns it was about efficiently making sure everybody got down safely and we couldn’t see well and just for the visibility. It’s a lot easier if there’s someone in front of you. You have some depth perception right? And Simone was in front. I was in front on the way up to the top and then I took the back on the way down and Simone was in the opposite position and yeah, we arrived and yeah, go ahead.

27:06.80
Alyssa
You used obviously your Gps on the way up and then his on the way down to? Okay, yeah.

27:17.54
Steve
Exactly yeah, he used his Gps on the way down I tracked as well. I had like written tour plans before I left in the states I consulted with other guides that were friends of mine in in the area and had built like actual tour plans with all the you know waypoints and all the things so I could navigate in any situation. So I had that as well. And so yeah, we got to the hut at noon and we didn’t really see you anyone we got to the hut, we had lunch the storm got worse and worse a couple of other people sort of trickled in particularly I remember like maybe 2 or 3 other people. We were speaking with the hut guardian there were other people that had reservations at that hut that night but you know as is common in these huts there’s no cell service here. Most of this section doesn’t have any cell service and you know this is something that I think is surprising to people on the haute route because you’re relatively close to civilization. But you have no outside data connection or phone connection and so a lot of people just didn’t call in and didn’t cancel. He didn’t really know who was coming or who wasn’t that kind of thing.

28:52.74
Steve
So what this film is about I will say just to kind of skip ahead is the next morning it was calm and clear and we left the vignette at 6am on our way to zermatt and we were about a hundred yards out of the hut when we heard somebody yelling and saw some people up above and what we ended up happening next. You know I think that people should watch the film frankly I don’t want to recount it for my own protection. It was my own psychological protection. It was we found one person who had fallen or been blown off and had been killed and that was the first person we found and then I took all the clients back to the hut. Our guests and simone and I went back up together. There was bad avalanche risk we navigated a avalanches to get up to where we’d heard this guy yelling and there was another 9 people up there in various states of you know life some were dead some were on their way out and some were some were back. One of them actually seemed to be doing sort of okay and when I returned to the hut because there was no cell service and whatnot and initiated a rescue and let the hut guardian because the hut guardian is the one who’s supposed to coordinate these emergencies in the mountains in the alps and he did that I returned to Simone and started helping him. We were basically in a triage situation trying to decide who we thought could survive and you know the swiss did an incredible job organizing the rescue we had Air Glacier and Air Zermatt and I think we had like 4 helicopters there at 1 point in time. We had a professional rescue come in. Pascal from Air Glacier was on the ground was there within about 20 minutes and then he kind of took over because Simone and I were in shock and he started helping. They got people to the hut they had by then a medical doctor in the hut. And then the medical doctors were doing further triage and then sending people out to various hospitals around Switzerland there were so many casualties that they couldn’t send them all to the same hospital and this is what the film was about is how this happened. And my role in it I think was to you know help guide Frank with my story. My side of the story and I did a number of interviews about my experiences with this and this is where we wanted to talk about this and I think that people will understand I don’t want to focus on the grim nature of the tragedy I want to as Frank has masterfully done with the film I think it’s a really important conversation for us to have as a community and it strikes at the core of what mountaineering is which is this concept of both freedom and the responsibility that comes with that freedom and it’s a big big topic. But I think that we as a community can both honor those that lost their lives and those that survived and ourselves our community by you know, talking about these things in an open honest way and I especially would emphasize in a non-judgmental way. I don’t think that there’s really any I think that has a community when we talk about accidents I think we really need to get past this idea of fault and move towards this idea of what you know this happened, we’re fallible. When people make mistakes things happen bad things happen to good people. And how can we, as a community hopefully learn and grow from that. The only real mistake at this point is to not learn from our mistakes. And yeah, so I know that’s a bit of a heavy monologue here.

33:29.37
Steve
Maybe you have some thoughts on that and can help guide us from here.

33:35.90
Alyssa
Yeah, well first off, really appreciate you sharing that. I can’t imagine the challenge of that whole situation to say the least. But I think your point is that the worst thing we can do is not learn from it. So I think we’re all really grateful that you’re willing to speak on what we can learn from it. I think that’s pretty evident in the film. I think that really the questions that are left are how do we take this and be safer, be more responsible in the mountains and I think that goes to this really fundamental question that I have and I’ve used guides in the past before for adventures and also my husband I have taken out people not in a guiding situation but in a situation where we’re helping learn or helping people to learn and which is a different situation. That’s not a paid relationship. But I guess how do you see the responsibilities breakdown. Because it’s really tricky. Codi and I tend to take the perspective of we shouldn’t just be so reliant upon the guide that we don’t have you know skill sets or have some kind of way of contributing. But I know that’s not necessarily the case with all clients and guides and so I guess I’m curious from a guide’s perspective like what do you see as the role of a client and also as situations become more dire. How does that relationship shift where you were saying okay, when things got really bad, we were very firm. Okay, we’re dictating the transitions etc. But how do you find that balance with a client and what do you see as the client’s role?

35:35.57
Steve
Yeah I think the true answer to that is there are a number of different possibilities for the guide guest relationship and they can vary on the same trip and they can certainly vary from guide guests to guide guest and so in this scenario OJ and Rowan. Both of them I had known for years and been guiding for years and we’ve been in a lot of experiences together in climbing and mountaineering, skiing, ski mountaineering every possible way and we were actually and still are very close friends. Two of my closest friends. And I think that Simone had a similar relationship with his team like these were people that he’d clearly been on a lot of trips with they knew him. They loved him. They joked with him they were like brothers and sisters almost at the end of the day. I think that becoming a guide is going through what is most often now a somewhat formalized process of training that is extremely rigorous and that training is supposed to be extremely rigorous because you are supposed to come out as a different person on the other end you’re supposed to come out as a person who knows how to do all of these preparations and so on.

37:18.52
Steve
And I’ll be honest like if I go out for a ski tour with you Alyssa like I’m not going to do all this preparation. But if I’m going out and my role is mountain guide and I’m putting the pin on and I’m doing that and I’m assuming that responsibility then for me I am doing all that preparation, I am building route plans, I am talking to people who’ve been there before, I’m doing all these things you know different guides take that differently some people take it more seriously than others I think that the risk with a lot of these what I would call, normal routes whether it’s the disappointment cleaver of Mount Rainier or the haute route. You know people assume that there’s just going to be a lot of other people around and that there’s going to be a trail and they’ll just be able to kind of follow. That’s the work that is disrespecting what is the freedom of the hills you know the freedom of the hills is founded on taking responsibility for yourself and if you’re not able to do that. You arguably don’t deserve that freedom because you haven’t earned it and guides play a really important role in our culture and in our community because I think that they should be the standard bearers for this rigorous preparation and they should be the ones that have the backup plan have the navigation plan have the extra biviac have the extra first aid kit have the extra satellite phone. You know, whatever it is to take care of a huge variety of situations and I think that most guests if like I think tha one of the juxtapositions here is that this is the people that spent this night that got lost and spent the night out because they didn’t have a navigation plan as I understand it. There was a guide and he kind of sort of merged with some other people who were doing the traverse without a guide and he didn’t have a Gps. He maybe didn’t have other navigation equipment but he had done this tour a bunch of times and I think that this is some of the I would leave it to the film to explain kind of how some of that unfolded and what some of those questions might have been but I think to your question. It’s like any human relationship. It’s best if you’re really explicit with it from the beginning and you talk about it. You know I, coming as your guest, am expecting x. I, as your guide, am expecting y and then it’s all out on the table and you can have that conversation and you know in the case of Rowan and OJ and I that conversation was largely implicit because that is exactly our agreement when we go out in the mountains and and I still go into the mountains with them and I don’t accept money for guiding anymore. I’ve hung up my pin. And I still got with them. But I tell them like when I’m when we’re out together like I’m going to be in guide mode because I have the most experience in that when we go to the wine bar, it’s OJ’s turn. He said he’s in charge. He’s a sommelier I have no business, there or making any recommendations. But when we’re in the mountains I’m going to assume that role because of my experience base and that’s that and we’re explicit about that and I think that’s the best thing that you can do and you know you had this, you know the film brings up this concept of the expert Halo and trusting experts out there in the field and I think that that brought up some really interesting I’d like to hear what your thoughts about that were.

41:24.00
Alyssa
Yeah, I think that I mean one of the heuristic traps and this is more in a situation where um, you don’t necessarily have a guide but you have someone who’s supposedly the expert who goes out and there’s, to break it down this halo around them and so people are unwilling to speak up if they feel uncomfortable or feel that they don’t have or that they might have insight into the situation because such and such knows what they’re doing. We don’t question them and so in the film, it brings up one of the guests who did survive had a Gps he offered it and Mario said no initially and they were very lost. Unfortunately, he had the gpx track of the summer route not the winter route which did end up causing issues. So I guess, you know in a situation and I think one of the other challenges of the group is that it was a very big group. It ended up it was 10 to begin with and then they linked up with 2 other or 4 other skiers. Who were doing it unguided and so when you have that many people that causes a lot of tension and friction. So I guess I’m thinking about like at what point in such a dire situation does a guide stay a guide or does it become more collaborative. Or kind of beyond the scope of what one person can handle and it sounds like from what you’re saying is that you would never have put yourself in that situation if possible and B that as a guide your responsibility is to be able to handle that situation.

43:26.86
Alyssa
So say you needed a gps like your GPS somehow your 5000 batteries died and your client comes up and says hey I actually have a Gps track like how as a guide do you handle that and how is a client do you handle like I actually don’t trust my guide right now. What do I do?

43:44.56
Steve
Yeah I mean it’s so hard and this goes back to people are fallible. There are lots of ways to make mistakes in these situations. You know I think one of the things that I personally credit to having been able to survive all the things that I did in my career as a guide and as a climber was preparation I’m overprepared like this is I think for me, it’s very important. And conversation comes up a lot around more in the avalanche safety realm where people talk about group dynamics and this kind of thing and this expert halo and that kind of all these things and you know we have to realize and everybody involved has to realize it for the most part nobody knows there is no right answer. There’s potentially a lot of right answers and there’s potentially a lot of wrong answers and there’s no one right, no one wrong but I think this concept where you have to like it’s almost like hyperrealism like when I’m in the mountains. It’s hyper-real like I need to deal with the reality that I’m observing. I’m kind of annoying as a climbing partner when the conditions are marginal because I’m constantly asking questions I’m constantly saying I think it’s and I tell my partners when I’m out like I don’t mean to be creating pressure and bringing us down like let’s reset I’m going to ask this question again if we should go down in another 15 minutes or another hour that doesn’t mean you should feel like I’m saying constantly that we need to go down I’m just saying that we need to ask the question again and let’s be real about what the situation is and not like magical thinking doesn’t work in the mountains like you cannot wish the storm away. You cannot wish that GPS track onto your device. You have to deal with reality and this also goes to another thing that I think can be used I think honestly that if a client if you’re in a client role with a guide. You absolutely have every right to ask them or her what they know and it’s not enough for them to just say I know the way for somebody to know something I think that this is a standard sort of truth if you will that I’d like to use them in lots of realms. It’s like okay, how do you know that? That’s the next question show me, you know that like you know the route. How do you know that rather than somebody saying like I know this about x y z okay, great I believe you now tell me how you know that, show me your evidence, show me your data, show me your your reference? Whatever it is and frankly I think that you know this is where we have to let go of the ego and the guides particularly have to be willing to be questioned I know when I was a young guide I would have been triggered and offended if somebody questioned me because I was the guide gosh darn it and I didn’t nobody should question me because I knew I’d already figured it out. How dare you question me, you know, actually they have every right to question you and you owe them an answer and if we let our guard down and to say like okay, yeah, you’re right. I owe you an answer let me show you and if you really know it. It won’t be a problem to explain it. It’s the person who can’t explain it right? That’s when you know you’re on thin ice when they are when they’re so defensive and they can’t explain it.

48:12.42
Alyssa
It’s the same in coaching.

48:21.68
Steve
That’s the thin ice and that’s when they probably don’t actually know and it’s sort of like doing due diligence in a way and I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that in my book.

48:34.37
Alyssa
I think that’s such a great point. Because I think I mean when we as guides we ask them tons of questions just because we want to learn. It’s probably annoying. It’s not because we’re necessarily questioning their authority or anything like that’s like. Hey, I just want to know why are we going this way or what led you to this decision exactly yeah because it’s like I mean if you’re invested in it and I think that probably goes to I think there’s a lot that clients can learn about being guests.

48:54.93
Steve
What do you see in the snowpack. What do you? Yeah.

49:09.20
Alyssa
It’s like being curious being interested. Are you there for a passive ski? Are you there to learn and grow and better yourself? I think that that probably goes to the point of that initial conversation you were talking about where you get a sense of okay this is a person who’s just. Always heard of the haute route that would be fun. Let’s do it versus someone who hires a guide because they want to learn from them or grow from them. Um, both are okay, yeah, absolutely.

49:33.63
Steve
Yeah, you know and both are legitimate reasons to hire a guide and I know I mean sorry that some of my recollections of numbers of people and timing stuff are off I’ve honestly had to kind of wall some of that off from my memory because it was an extremely traumatic experience for me. I know there were a lot of people in there I know that a bunch I know I couldn’t even tell you exactly honestly how many people died like I didn’t know any of these people I found you know I’d never I mean apparently I’d been close to them in a hut the night before but I didn’t know I never talked to them I had no I never met Mario the guide. He was the one who died the first one we found actually and I touched and lifted and hugged and cried and did all the things with these people but I never saw them I’ve never seen them but the survivors I’ve never seen again either and never had had any contact with so it was this very intense like this all happened in basically 3 hours my whole interaction with this. But this tragedy spanned 3 hours where from the time we found Mario probably like you know 10 after 6 in the morning until everybody was you know either? You know they flew us off we were also like completely devastated right? Like they actually flew us out to the Aerulla air base and they they had like psychologists there waiting for us and they started treating us for our you know trauma that we’d just been through and um, which was fantastic. By the way they took really good care of us. They organized everything for us the rest of that day and so on but nevertheless a lot of the details of what happened are a bit of a blur because it was just like all of a sudden, we were going to Zermatt and then like all of a sudden there were bodies and you know dying people and people in Cardiac arrest and all these horrible things happening and then it was over really fast too because once the professional rescuers with Helicopters came on scene but you know I think it kind of goes to for me a lot of when I think back on my experience with this and then I think back like what would I do differently would I have done anything differently? And I can say that I wouldn’t and that’s really good for me to be able to say that because I did my preparation I took care of my group.

52:38.83
Steve
I had no idea these people were out there. None of us did. It was a shock for us to find them in the morning and we did the best we could we really. The main thing we did, if anything was to get the helicopters coming up there and to get the professional rescuer because these people needed to go into a hospital and have like very very specific care and there wasn’t much you could do in the field in that situation and that’s kind of one of my big takeaways as I think we didn’t end up finishing the tour because obviously after this experience we like I said they flew us out and we were done and that wasn’t exactly how we expected that day. It wasn’t at all how we expected that day to go. You know the storm was over. We had good visibility. It was kind of funky snow. You know that kind of thing we were just thinking about Vermont and you know it was incredibly tragic and you know as you said like was it bad luck was it human error was it careless as well. You know I mean you also said something really good I thought that it it illustrates the complexity of being human like all of those things.

54:05.40
Steve
There was bad luck. There was carelessness. There was human error. There were also things that were done really well by everyone involved and there was you know as you watch the movie and you’ll see that there are people who went through that experience that have nothing but good things to say about Mario and a lot of gratitude and there are other people who were on the same there and went through warned us precisely the same thing and have nothing good to say about Mario and that’s also really interesting I think that also. encapsulates the complexity of being a human and moving through a scenario like this and I think this is exactly what I know Frank wanted people to get out of this film was not to make judgments not to point fingers but to have us as a community have this discussion as to how we want to show up as clients how we want to show up as guides how we want to show up as you know general public doing a ski tour what level of preparation and when. Not every haute route that you need to have that level of preparation like I prepared a month beforehand because it’s not like I lived there. I didn’t live in Europe at that time I was just going to like get on a jet be dropped into Chamonix like do this tour in seven days get on a jet and fly home.

55:30.53
Steve
So I had to prepare for the wildest possible scenarios because I had no idea what was going on like some of these guides in the alps that maybe do the haute route 3 times 4 times in a year in 1 season and they’ve maybe done it 30 times in their lives of course like they’re going to have a different sense of what that preparation is than what I would have when I’ve never been there before never done other than a couple tiny segments and I’ve basically not done any of that route. So yeah, everyone’s variables are going to be different and they’re going to bring a lot of lot of different expectations and different experiences to the table.

56:09.63
Alyssa
Ah, yeah I think there’s kind of 3 points that came to my mind first just a small thing but in the movie and I think we’ve seen a couple of people email or question is that in the movie, it makes it seem like you might have interacted with him or known he was there known something was happening and so I think it’s very good to make it clear. It’s like no in those huts and I can attest to this like they’re crazy like of course you wouldn’t know random x person. You know you don’t have a relationship with them and so I think it’s really good to hear where you’re like no I’d never seen the guy had never interacted with him and so I think that’s a very good distinction to make.

56:44.77
Steve
Also didn’t know where they were going and I think that lots of and especially in a situation like that because of a weather forecast, everyone was changing their plans like some people were going to another hut on the Italian side. Some people were going to arola. We were, to my knowledge, the only group that decided to go over the Pigne down to the vignette I didn’t know of anyone else doing that. That’s what we told the high guardian when we got there too and you know like 3 other people came that day so it was more or less true.

57:21.34
Alyssa
Yeah, yeah, and I think also just language barriers and all of that like there’s a lot that goes into it, that may not be quite as clear from the movie. Not that the movie didn’t do a good job, it was just like the way that it’s framed etc. Um, second I think the point that Frank makes because he starts it out and he has all these interviews of like Mario’s such a great guy super well known he’s super knowledgeable you know we thought really highly of him. We were good friends and so I think it’s so easy to see a news article about this and go he’s a negligent guide like he shouldn’t have been doing that and didn’t know what he was doing. That’s not at all I think that it’s so much more gray than that and so I think that frank does an amazing job of showing he wasn’t I think that you can see some red flags now where maybe the group was too big that I guess they didn’t bring helmets. There’s a few things that it was just like yeah you know he wasn’t as prepared but also he probably had done it a bunch of times and so and he did have a really good relationship it seems like with several of the clients. So I think it just does a great job to show that issues like this especially from the outside public that seems so black and white are not. It’s really complex and and that these people who obviously there was human error and there were lapses in in judgment at times that’s not to say he was just a bad person that wanted things to happen badly in the mountains. No one wants that and that he didn’t have a tremendous skill set I mean you don’t become a pinned guide without knowing a whole lot. So that’s another part of it. But I’m curious because you discussed this a little bit or have brought this up but, partially the reason why you didn’t want to do something like the haute route is that you become the rescuer.

59:15.61
Steve
Yeah.

59:31.89
Alyssa
In these situations which wow you called that from a long ways away. But what is your responsibility as a guide in the mountains to help people like is there a written protocol or like what does that look like. I’m curious.

59:50.99
Steve
Yeah, you know I’m sure there is a written protocol in the guide’s manuals and so on and in the guiding world but I’m so far outside of that now I just don’t know what is current. You know I took my first guide exam in 1992 and I earned my pin in 99 and you know that everything around that has changed since then and I would say that you know the way I would understand it is you know everyone needs to act to the best of their abilities and if you know I think that Mario did that given the scenario that he had I mean did he prepare adequately like I don’t want to look for for blame but like I’m sure that he was trying to keep everybody alive and get them out of that situation I’m sure that he actually died trying to do exactly that. And that’s super tragic. But I think that for me, it is often a gray area and for example, this one will not. Maybe the last time or the second to last time I climbed Denali I was doing it in a vast manner from the fourteen thousand foot camp to the top and on the way down met this guy who just seemed really out of it.

01:01:24.15
Steve
I just had like an ice ax and like a backpack with the thermos and a parka in it and you know the weather was not perfect and this guy was kind of out of it really needed help and I helped him right up to the point in which I felt like he was really endangering my life and I was like I’m willing to help you but I’m not honestly willing to die helping you like you got yourself into this and now you’re in danger you’re putting me in danger because I got this little piece of rope and I was trying to short rope him back down from the Denali pass down the seventeen thousand foot camp and it’s really pretty steep there and the conditions were not good. It was a little bit icy and this guy was like totally attacked he couldn’t walk and you know I thought he was just going to pull me down and he’s a big guy I didn’t know that I could hold him. And those in those kind of hard icy conditions and you know I mean it was really hard because I felt really guilty about like this guy and then he got himself down. He survived. But until I knew that he had gotten himself down and survived I was just wrecked for like those two days because I didn’t know and I’m like so doubting myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him up there but like I kept coming back to this idea like yeah I mean I don’t know like if he had really pitched over hard like.

01:02:55.85
Steve
I would not have been able to hold that guy and I know that because I’m a mountain guide and I short roped a ton in my life and I know this mountain super well and I know my abilities and my limits and I wish I could have you know, transported him out of that situation. But also I didn’t put him in that situation. He put himself in that situation.

01:03:13.55
Alyssa
And yeah that’s a bit of a different situation because it’s not you didn’t guide him to that point and then say I can’t do it you know it’s like he put himself there.

01:03:14.49
Steve
It’s really hard.

01:03:26.95
Steve
Right? Right.

01:03:32.50
Alyssa
I think we’re going to come across this question a lot but it’s the question of to what do we owe others and to what do we owe ourselves and our families. Um, there’s a whole philosophy book with that title and I think I mean just a small anecdote. I’m Wilderness first Responder certified and one of the things they say is that there are times where people go into the mountains and they’re not expecting to be rescued that they go into the mountains to put themselves in the situation where. If something happens they’re okay with that and it’s not your responsibility to die for them because to a certain extent you are I mean an autonomous human being you make your choices and yes, we need to help as much as we can. I don’t think there’s a single one of us who doesn’t want to help out there but I do also like that in a sense I think was truly one of the most important things I took away from that training is that there are some people who don’t want nor ask for that help and and we have to know that too.

01:04:53.27
Steve
Yeah that’s ah, that’s a great point and this is one of the things I think that’s sort of the you know we have to remember that these places are wilderness in the truest sense of the word and it doesn’t always feel like it frankly. When you’re up on high on the west buttress of Denali on a really nice day. It’s pretty nice. You know, but a lot of times it just isn’t like that and same on the haute route like there’s a lot of days like where you know.

01:05:27.45
Steve
That place where those people died and perished in that exposed spot trying to bivy and were trying to survive through a really bad storm and overnight like there’s probably a lot of nights where people just like sat down and kind of dosed off and woke up the next morning and walked down and totally fine.

01:05:41.80
Alyssa
Been totally fine. Yeah.

01:05:46.39
Steve
This just wasn’t one of those nights and we have to respect that this is truly wilderness and you’re really making that decision when you go out into those places and you know of course we’re humans and so if we find somebody that’s in trouble. We want to help them. But you know it is I think a difference between the the guide client relationship in general and just sort of like a good samaritan if you will kind kind of relationship where you’re just trying to help people out. But again I think that with great freedom comes great responsibility and the first person you’re responsible to is yourself and treating these places with the respect that they frankly deserve and ignore that at your peril and that’s a lot of times you know people ignore that at their peril and get away with it. That’s also happened a lot and that’s a tricky part right? So then it just sort of breeds this complacency and that’s where I think that’s the gray and that’s where we have to you know, be careful.

01:06:49.35
Alyssa
Yeah, that’s the tricky part. Yeah.

01:07:03.23
Steve
And that’s why these conversations are so important we need to remind ourselves or remind the community that this is gray and we have to be vigilant if we want to truly survive and thrive through these experiences which is really what they’re for and I think that that’s how part of what I want to do with this series and we’ve talked about this Alyssa is I really want to be a part of the conversation that reframes the I’d say purpose of mountaineering and I use that term the broadest possible sense of going into the mountains. On foot, on skis, on crampons and running shoes. All of the things that did that going into the mountains and is a great gift and a great responsibility. And we do it as part of our journey as humans and we need to in my opinion move well past this sort of success or failure viewpoint this conquering of the mountain like that is so last century and we really need to let go of that and move past that as a community and I don’t want to speak about this in terms of negatives. I want to speak about it in terms of positives which is what it can be I mean I think the mountains can be an incredible source of human inspiration, of human experience, of human beauty a stage for human love and it’s of course a stage for human sorrow and tragedy. This is what makes it also interesting and this is why I’m so passionate about our project that we share in with uphill athlete and with others and just continuing to be part of this mountaining community. And keep talking about like all the good that there is out there in the sense of a process that it’s never over. There is no like this whole kind of summit or death or win or lose or right or wrong. It’s this binary viewpoint of mountaineering is just we’re done with it. Let’s move on. Let’s let’s completely change the conversation into one where it’s about what we’re experiencing ,what we’re sharing, what we’re learning, how we’re showing up, how we’re feeling, how we’re inspired, how we’re triggered, how we’re all of these things and growing because that’s what this is about and I hope you know that we can create and perpetuate and contribute to this conversation across the whole community that we can all do this and make it actually part of our culture. I think that for me is the linchpin. We make it part of our culture as friends, as families, as community and the goal is to be out and doing and enjoying to the best of our abilities for as long as possible for as many good days in the mountains as we possibly can and and that is success that is what we’re striving for. Not just how many eight thousand meter peaks did you climb or whatever the metric is you know this is not running around to track. Let’s stop treating it like that. Let’s start engaging in the process. Sorry that was my little speech.

01:11:05.69
Alyssa
Beautifully said. I mean that among other things, is exactly why we’re talking. I mean I think it’s why Uphill Athlete exists and it’s why I have so much respect for you is because of that perspective. And yeah I think that we’re getting there but especially as we see more and more people entering these spaces I think we just have to keep being more aware and keep supporting each other and knowing that this is not weakness it shouldn’t even be associated with that at all. It’s a means of becoming. It’s like everything we do is how do we move through the mountains in the safest most responsible and like this most storytelling way that we can I guess in a way and and so I think this all goes to that.

01:12:17.84
Alyssa
I will say don’t know where this fits but I feel like it needs to be said is that I think part of the why we do go to the mountains is because there is an element of danger because there is an element of uncertainty in a way that we don’t get from our daily lives that we seek that unknown because so much of our lives is really regimented and it’s not that I ever. Every one of these tragedies is truly a tragedy but I also think that element of curiosity and unknown is part of what draws us and if there isn’t a danger element and I think that is a really important aspect for good or for bad I mean it kind of goes into that gray area of like that comes with the package.

01:13:09.67
Steve
Yeah, absolutely and I think that there’s a couple points you said that I thought were really good and one is that all of what you said was really good but I just want to reiterate ah on a couple and one was that you know.

01:13:27.26
Steve
There’s a lot of new people coming into this sport and it’s our responsibility now. But at some point in the not too distant future. It’s going to be their responsibility to keep beating this drum and keep talking about this and keep setting. That’s what culture is having this conversation over and over and over. And we’re going to do that. We’re going to play our role and you know to the risk piece I think we should have some other conversations about risk and I think it’s important to understand that skiing the Haute route is not the same thing as camping in the middle of a freeway. You know if you just want abject risk there or if you want to commit suicide like there are ways to do that and unfortunately and tragically many people have done so and what we are.

01:14:07.40
Alyssa
It’s yes, exactly. Yeah.

01:14:24.21
Steve
The risk component in the mountains is a parameter but it’s not the defining aspect and I think that this goes back to my kind of concept or not my kind of concept. But this goes back to the concept of sort of dealing with reality like hyper reality like risk is part of that reality and we don’t need to overinflate it. But we also certainly don’t want to diminish it or ignore it and that is part of the dance and that is part of the value frankly of moving through the mountains is that you have this as one of your dance partners.

01:15:16.68
Alyssa
That’s a great way of putting it? Yeah well oh man.

01:15:23.45
Steve
We’re going to link to the movie. Yeah well I think we’re not sure how to conclude here but or how to wrap this up but I’ll let you go first.

01:15:28.29
Alyssa
I guess.

01:15:35.64
Alyssa
I was just going to say I mean the kind of the final question I put is what are your biggest takeaways. But I think we’ve kind of said that without having to explicitly ask that question I mean I guess from what I take away from this conversation and wow do I feel privileged to get to have this conversation with you Steve. I do feel really lucky I often forget that I’m talking to the just Steve house I just think of you as Steve my friend but I think that.

01:16:06.27
Steve
As you should.

01:16:13.80
Alyssa
You know these things are that you can never stop learning that judgment is not nearly as useful as or not at all useful in comparison to learning and understanding and that many of these things are very gray. And that we shouldn’t think of it as success or failure or right or wrong. We should think of it as as growth and and passing that along to the generations to come and that humans are complex.

01:16:48.72
Steve
Yeah.

01:16:50.46
Alyssa
And that’s what makes it beautiful and that’s what makes it dangerous and challenging and it’s why we want to go to the mountains. So ah, nice.

01:16:56.58
Steve
And well said I don’t know technically yet if this is possible. We’ll do our best to embed the film and in the post on the website on the uphill athlete website with this podcast. Depends on the settings that they have on their Youtube channel and if not, we’ll make sure that there’s a way people can find the film and you know it’s going to be available in english later on this summer or this fall it’s going to make the round I’m sure film festivals and we’ll probably see some other distribution. And it’s a beautiful film about a tragic event and I hope that you know all the best that I feel like we can do is to try to encourage people to watch the film and have these conversations among themselves and hopefully what we were able to say to one another tonight can be woven into those conversations and yeah, we can all be in a little better place because of it. That’s the best thing that can come out of this tragedy.

01:18:06.42
Alyssa
Definitely, well thank you Steve I think it’s time to call it good. Maybe grab another cup of tea or beer and yeah sign off the beer is empty. That’s the end.

01:18:12.73
Steve
Well, the beer is empty. That’s how I know you know when the bottle is empty. That’s when the podcast is over so here. Great.

01:18:25.33
Alyssa
Awesome! Well thanks Steve for all of this and this is just the beginning I think this was a good start. So we’re signing off from the house.

01:18:32.10
Steve
Excellent, yeah indeed.