Hey folks, welcome back to the Stronger is Better podcast brought to you by Starting Strength Gyms. As a reminder on the Stronger is Better podcast, we focus on principles and process and how hard physical effort makes you a better person, gives you a better life, all that good stuff. Today, I am joined by David Phillips, and David is a member at Starting Strength San Antonio, right? Starting Strength San Antonio, and he's got a really interesting story. Once again, just like our last guest, I don't have a ton of background. I'm trusting Brittany and the coaches down there that he's actually interesting. He's got a cool website, lots of interesting things to talk about, and then obviously how strength training applies to your situation. So, yeah, David, if you want, if you wouldn't mind, give us a rundown who you are, how long you've been training with us and what's your thing, man. Well, my name is David Ghost Phillips. Ghost is my trail name. When I'm out hiking through the Triple Crown, I got it from some friends on the AT. And so I spent 25 years in the Navy. That's how I know my co-chair, Brittany, and her husband, Tom, and then came to find out as I was nearing the end of my service that they worked over at Starting Strengths. And Tom especially had been trying to get me over to the San Antonio gym for quite a while because he knew that I don't have much of a background in lifting. And so kind of talking to them, my wife is the one that actually started first. She has a much deeper background in lifting when she was – my wife's also a veteran. When she was deployed. of a novice too, and I wanted some solid instruction in lifting because I knew going forward to Everest, it's about a year-long, 10-month to a year process, and I wanted a very heavy baseline in strength training before I started moving into some of the very mountain-specific. exercises. So I've been with them with Starting Strength San Antonio for about a year leading up to Everest because it really takes that amount of time to go that deep in the tank as I came to find out on summit day, but we'll talk about that a little bit more later. But yeah, not traditionally a lifter, but new given that this was the biggest expedition I'd ever been on and some of my previous experiences down in South America and Alaska that I needed, a lot more strength on the chassis than I did for other expeditions. Great. Awesome. That's a good starting point. So there's a couple of things I need to ask you about, obviously. So if you guys haven't picked it up by now. David's a climber, right? Is that the proper term climber? Yeah. Climber, mountaineer, dirtbag, whatever works. All right. So he's a climber, mountaineer and dirtbag, uh, in that order. Right. Uh, and then also a lifter, right? So you, um, when did you start at, uh, starting strength San Antonio? And was that your first experience with barbell training? That was, uh, so I started with them, uh, kind of late June last year, uh, kind of about a year out, give or take from my time on Everest. And, uh, I had never done any formal barbell training. I'd done quite a bit through some other different, um, training regimens leading up to Denali, leading up to Aconcagua. Those are, you know, North and South America's highest peaks respectively. Um, but everything I'd read about Everest said that I really needed a much, uh, heavier barbell training. I really needed a much, uh, heavier baseline routine. And I knew that was only going to come through, uh, barbell training and having, talked to the coaches here that are personal family friends, Brittany and Tom, that starting strength was the best place to go to that. And so my wife had started first. And then once I kind of hit my window for Everest, started lifting with you all consecutively for several months. Very good. Very good. So you mentioned Triple Crown. That's a big deal, right? What does that. mean? So the Triple Crown in U.S. hiking is the Appalachian Trail. It's about 2,200 miles. The Pacific Crest Trail is about 2,600 miles, and that's on the west coast. AT, of course, on the east coast. And then Continental Divide is about 3,200 miles through the spine of the country. So it goes right through Colorado, Montana, and so on. Oh, cool. I didn't know. Those are the first. Yeah. So that'll probably be the last one I do. I did the Appalachian. Trail in 2023, right as I was coming off active duty. retiring so I spent four months on the trail from Georgia to Maine straight shot through and then I was supposed to actually start the Pacific Crest Trail, six days ago but because of frostbite from Everest and we talked about that quite a bit more it didn't start yeah it's gonna take me quite a bit longer to to come back to 100% and then get back to lifting because I can't the front end of my feet right now and then Pacific Crest Trail will be the last one because. that one's a little more freewheeling in that there's not a set path you have to like kind of navigate your way from Mexico to Canada okay by and large on your own so that'll be the most difficult so I'm kind of working my way up from shortest to longest yeah generally so like the Appalachian Trail is this is like a system of trails right it's not a single trail you're following all the way from north to south um it is it is it starts well depending on what side you start on at Springer Mountain, there in northern Georgia and then heads. It's straight north from there all the way up to Maine at Mount Katahdin. And so that is a set trail. It's been in place since, and I should know better, but since the early 30s. Okay. But there are a lot of offshoots, and it does change every year because there's a lot of blowdowns or forest fires. So they do reroute all the time. The original trail was about 2,000 miles, but now it's about 2,200 because of all the reroutes and stuff. So then the Pacific Rim Trail is a Pacific Rim Trail, right? That one's a little bit more maybe cobbled together. And I had no idea there was a Continental Divide. Is that an actual trail, or is that something that you're putting together? No. The Continental Divide Trail is more kind of a choose-your-own-adventure. Okay. There are some areas that are very lightly maintained, and that's kind of the difference between, like, the AT is very heavily maintained. Every state has their own chapters that maintain a section. Same with the Pacific Crest Trail. They have people. people that maintain all the way from California up through Washington. But Pacific Crest Jail is more of a general direction. I'm heading that way. A lot of through like BLM lands or even some private lands that people give you safe passage. Gotcha. But then the Continental Divide Trail. The Continental Divide Trail is just all, I mean, you're figuring it out and it's pretty damn remote, right? From what I know of where the Continental Divide is. It is. Yeah. Yeah, and that's why I'm saving the best for last because, yeah, you really have to have kind of more of your bushcraft or navigation skills in hand because, you know, on the AT, you're generally 15 minutes from civilization anywhere you go, even if you're in the backwoods. Yeah. And very similar with the Pacific Crest Trail, you're pretty close to civilization because it travels right through the Sierras and then cascades. But through the Continental Divide, you're just out in the boonies a lot of time. Dude, that's wild. So is it like… New Mexico, like Utah, is it that way? Or is it further west or further east? New Mexico, up through Colorado, and then on through north. I was just there this March, April, training for it as I was training for Everest. I actually put boots on the Continental Divide for the first time. It heads right through Rocky Mountain National Park and continues on north. And then you end up in Glacier National Park is kind of where it ends there at the border of Canada. Oh, that's cool, man. And do you do this stuff solo, or do you go with a group of people, or how do you do this? So I did the AT solo. I had a good friend of mine that I made along the way, but I started with a friend. He had to quit in northern Georgia due to some medical issues. So I was essentially on my own, found somebody to hike with maybe about 60% of the time. But you kind of find your trail family as you make your way along. But there's a lot of solo time as well because you don't want to slow yourself down or overpace with somebody. This is too fast for you. You kind of hike your own. is what we say. You're doing your own thing. But after that, my wife wasn't super happy that I was gone for four and a half months. So I bought an older RV that I'm fixing up that she'll be my trail vehicle on the PCT and CDT to kind of help with resupply and also so we get to spend a lot more time with each other. Oh, very cool. Because it's pretty lonely out there on the trail. The reason I got the nickname Ghost was because I was generally the first one up and out in the morning and then would just slide in to camp at night right before sunset. So there were a lot of times I never saw the same people over again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would just go in and out of camps. And when you're moving at that kind of pace, yeah, it can be more lonely. How long are you hiking every day? I mean, are you going just until you can't go anywhere? Or are you hitting a target, like maybe at dark or something? It really depends on what the day. So I had both a hard copy book. And then also the app, it kind of shows your way along the way. So depending on like resupply days, I would generally carry about five days worth of food tops because you want to stay fairly light, but you also got to eat. So that's kind of the tradeoff there. But I would generally go from sunup to sunset. That was kind of my metric. And wherever the next shelter was, I didn't always sleep in the shelter, but it's nice to be around people and there are safety in numbers. And so we're just trying to kind of pinpoint out, okay, I want to be at this point. And if I felt good or hit there early, then I'd push on to the next. And I did cowboy camp a couple times where you just pop a tent up and wherever you can because you're somewhere in between. Like I don't want to finish the day at 3 p.m. because I still have plenty of sunlight left. So it just depends on kind of how you're feeling that day. Cool. And then how much weight are you normally carrying around? I mean it's within a range, right? So what are you carrying? What are you looking at? So my, my range was generally like 28 to 35 pounds, depending on how many days in between to the next town resupply. A lot of people on, you name it, trail will pre-pack everything, ship it ahead to the post office and do pickups along the way. I decided not to do that because then you're at the mercy of the post office being open. Yeah. And so I would just kind of ballpark, like, let me throw a tack, you know, a dart at the wall and try to hit this town. So I would carry, have to carry for another three days, four days, five days, whatever happened to be. And so there were, there were some days, you know, humping loads out of town. It was probably closer to 40 pounds because I knew it was going to be a much longer haul to the next spot, especially to get farther North into like Maine, New Hampshire. It can be a bit farther apart between some of the different resupply areas. Oh man, that's interesting. Yeah. So, uh, my, my, it's funny. You said 28 to 38 pounds. My wife and I did like a, like a three. day uh just in the in the wichita mountains wilderness area over here and it's not it's not a big deal at all right but we're just hiking around messing around we brought you have to bring all your stuff in and we were we tried like we tried to make it as light as possible my my bag was 46 pounds super inefficient i'm sure and then hers was like hers was like up over like 35 or close to 40 or something and we're just like it is the first time we'd ever. done it it was hilarious yeah um you guys are serious man 28 pounds i mean it's it's all about personal comfort some people super geek out that stuff and they're like i gotta get it to 18 pounds they're like any trade-off you make for we're gonna trade off for comfort like yeah you know you can get most super ultra light stuff out there but you're probably gonna be cold you know miserable more often than the rest of us right all right yeah it's there's always a trade-off and so i always traded heavy on food they say you you carry what you fear the most so i carried food. because i was always worried about running out in the middle of nowhere you, So it's always good to have that buffer. When I went through survival school for the Navy, that was always a big thing. Like, when am I going to eat again? So that was always kind of forefront there on my mind when I was hiking, too, of making sure I had enough calories. It's hard to make decisions, too. You get something called hiker brain, where your brain just doesn't have enough carbs and fats, and you just don't make the best decisions sometimes. So always try to err on the side of caution. Sure, sure. Yeah, man. Here's another fairly basic question for you. What is the difference between—and I can make some guesses, right? But there's climbing and mountaineering. So climbing is just the actual act of climbing, and then mountaineering, there's more to that, right? So could you run us through that? Yeah, so I would say I'm definitely more of a mountaineer than a climber. A climber is that oftentimes you see rock climbers. You have guys like—not that they're not mountaineers, but guys like Alex Honnold is one of the biggest, right? He is a— He's a free soloist, and he does a lot of other sport, traditional climbing. But basically, you're out on rock, and that's kind of – sometimes you're in mixed terrain, rock and ice, but it's more so more of the vertical type terrain. Sometimes in the mountains, sometimes just at boulders and those kind of things, so not to dive too far into that. But then mountaineer is you're out in the mountains, and you are trying to hit, generally speaking, a certain peak. And, you know, it's much longer of an evolution oftentimes. I am an athlete in that realm, but I'm never going to set any FKTs or necessarily climb a named peak. But I'm in the same ballpark as a lot of those folks. I saw a lot of very famous climbers, especially while I was there on Everest's go-around. We're all climbing the same mountain. But essentially, the big difference is those guys are maybe more in the – the true vertical terrain on hard rock. And we are, you know, kind of navigating a route, you know, in this case, kind of the most efficient and expeditious route up the mountains. So they are, you know, dovetailed into each other. Right. You know, similar that, you know, just listening to some of you guys, other stuff, you know, the differences, say, between like CrossFit and traditional lifting, that there's a lot of dovetail in between the two that lends to each other. Yep. Like, you need to be a climber to be a good mountaineer, but you don't necessarily need to be a mountaineer to be a good climber. Yeah, makes perfect sense. Yeah, absolutely. So, let's talk, and by the way, we can kind of take this in whichever direction you want, but maybe we could start with your decision to train with barbells at the gym. So, prior to that, you had done some, and yeah, excuse me for being unfamiliar, but you'd done some stuff in South America. Yeah. Climbed some peaks there. So, what was different about the preparation? for those, and what made you decide to do barbells for Everest? So I had, ever since my first attempt on Aconcagua, which is the highest in South America down in Argentina, I had used a different company that is a direct offshoot of CrossFit, very CrossFit-esque, but they train to very specific activities, you know, high 5,000, 6,000 meter peaks, or law enforcement, firefighter, what have you. It's very specific training. So there is, in those different exercises, some different barbell, light barbell-type work involved, you know, deadlifts, squats, and those kind of activities. But I knew for Everest, I needed a much larger chassis. I put on nearly 30 pounds of muscle between starting with starting strength last summer and final as I headed out for Nepal. Oh, wow. And so I just needed a larger chassis, and I needed some of that was recovery, too. I had a nagging injury. injury as I came off the Appalachian Trail. I was up in Maine in the 100-mile wilderness, which is kind of the last stretch before you get to Baxter State Park, which is where Mount Katahdin is at the end of the trail. I slipped off of a rock in the stream and popped something in my right hip. And so I also knew that starting strength does a lot of focus on recovering athletes. And so I needed that kind of one-on-one type training instead of just doing it alone in. the garage. Because again, I have a firm grasp, especially on recovery type activities, but especially on traditional lifting methods. I've never been formally trained. And I know that that is kind of the bread and butter at starting strength. That's what I needed. I didn't want to further injure myself, but also needed that kind of one-on-one guidance. Nice. Yeah. And if you don't want to mention it, we can cut it out. But were you doing Jim Jones? Is that what you were doing? I was doing MTI. Oh, okay, okay, yeah. Mount Tactical Institute. Yep, yep, okay. And loved those guys. They had got me to many other peaks, and I used them kind of on the back end as I got very close to Everest, still mixing in barbell work, but for the other days of the week, doing some other traditional, like, box work. But, you know, I knew that that wasn't going to get me there. I'd done well enough in Alaska, in South America, climbing different peaks. But the Himalayas are an entirely different beast, and I knew that wasn't going to get me across the line. And that definitely played out on Summit Day, having that extra chassis strength and just being able to reach that much deeper into the bag than I had before. Man, that's really cool. So, yeah, let's run through it. So you decided to do strength training. A really interesting point that you said multiple times, that you needed a larger chassis. You know, I think, I think, for people involved in any kind of, Where there's a heavy endurance component, people tend to think, and even though practical experience is always counter to this, people tend to think that getting larger, and in your case it was something like 35 pounds you said, is somehow a detriment to endurance capability, hiking, walking, running, all these different things. And it's just like the most simple analogy, which is almost like a cliche at this point, is that does a larger engine make the car slower? Of course not, right? Does a more robust suspension have detrimental effects to performance? Of course not, right? So before we get into specifics of what you did and how, could you give us your general thoughts on that idea, that concept, a bigger chassis, you're about to do this pretty insane deal. I don't know what people really think about climbing Everest or climbing any of these mountains. It can't be anything like we imagine, right? It's like whatever we're thinking, watching YouTube videos or watching TV, it's a whole different deal actually doing the thing. So what are your thoughts there in terms of endurance and size and strength generally? Yeah, well, I mean, you just spoke to endurance, right? I come from a background. I'm off-season, off-mountaineering season. I'm a trail runner. I do ultras up to 100K, still trying to get the 100-miler done here at some point. But with that, I always have been traditionally much smaller. I grew up playing soccer and then transitioning from soccer into skateboarding. I was a skateboarder for 20-some-odd years and then got into mountaineering towards the back end of my Navy career. And with that, just realized that – and I kind of learned early in my mountaineering career. That, you know, being small and light only gets you. so far. One of my first guides would say, you know, the people that come out to this mountain get crushed are the triathletes. They have so little body fat, so little reserve, you know, a lot of endurance capacity, but so little reserve to lean back on. So in the mountains, in the case of Everest, we were there for six, seven weeks. And so putting all that extra weight on my chassis is not only to help get me up the mountain strength wise, but also because, you know, there, especially at base camps at 17,000 feet, as you make your way up to the. summit at 29,000 feet, your body is burning multiples more calories than you're used to on any given day. And then the higher you get in altitude, the less you want to eat. It suppresses your appetite. So you need more on your body just to be able to burn through some of that extra fat and muscle store. Because, you know, especially on summit days, you're burning upwards of 10,000 calories. So you're burning upwards of 10,000 calories. So you're burning upwards of 10,000, calories. a day, and you just can't get that intake back into you, especially once you get up. to camp two at 21, 22,000 feet. Your appetite is suppressed, and you need those extra reserves already on your frame, to be able to burn through some of that excess capacity. Even though I put on those 30, 35 pounds, by the time I got home, I had lost 16 pounds over six, seven weeks. Right. Most all of that was marble. I've gone into it with a mentality of, I need to put all this extra on my body, not only. for just the ability to get myself to 29,000 plus feet, but also because I'm going to lose that much more the higher I go. I've had other expeditions that were much shorter, like three weeks, and still lose 15 pounds. Yeah. You have to be able to not only have enough muscle- To get to the peak, but then also safely get back down. And that's kind of the thing that's lost a lot of people, and it was definitely lost on some of the folks I came across on Everest. We can speak more to that if you'd like about people that gave their all to get to the summit and then didn't have enough in the tank to get back down. And that's where I saw that extra strength training come into play because I had that much more in reserve to push all the way back down. Because getting to the top is the easy part. It's getting back down safely that's where people trip up and falter. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, so you're saying that people can get to the summit and then there's significant problems on the way down. So are people getting injured and actually dying on the way down versus the way up? Yes. Yeah, we had several fatalities on my summit day, and I walked past some folks as they were in the process of breaking. Down and not to. I don't know their, you know, unique situations, but at the same time, I knew I had done everything possible that I could do, and hence, you know, the strength training to be as my best self possible out there on the mountain. And because out there, too, it's a team sport, right? Yes, I'm climbing by myself, but I have a Sherpa that's tied to me. I have my teammates that are there with me as well, oftentimes tied to me at the same time. And so if I start to falter, then that is a huge detriment on the rest of the team, and by huge detriment, I mean it could be life-altering, you know, whether it's death or frostbite to other members or other injuries that come into high-altitude mountaineering. You want to be your best version up there, not just for yourself, but for all those around you. Yeah, gotcha. In your situation, I guess maybe even amongst your team and just generally for… Maybe for an American going over there, what are the biggest… risks that you're worried about? Is it frostbite? Is it an orthopedic injury? What is exposure? What are the risks kind of in ranked order? Yeah, I think the biggest for all of us, and it's the one that was a very real and present. terror, is when you go up through the icefall. When base camp is about 17,000 feet and you're on the glacial moraine, which is kind of just a flat area, you're still on the glacier, but it's covered by a bunch of rockfall. And so it is relatively stable. But then right above that is the Khumbu Icefall. And it's just huge tearing blocks bigger than your house, you know, 40, 60 feet tall of ice that's just all crumbling because as it comes down the mountain, it just kind of breaks and shatters into a million pieces. And that's where you see. all the ladders roped together and all that kind of stuff. And at any point in time, it could just let go and you could be... Crushed by, you know, a hundred ton block of ice, man. Um, and, and, you know, even when we got, when we did our first rotation up, um, we, we stopped briefly to, to turn back around. We just went up about halfway through the ice fall and they came back down and literally a hundred yards away, there was a huge, um, ice fall, uh, of just crashing a block that, that was very danger close. And, uh, so we, we quickly turned around and started making our way back down. And then when we went up again, another couple of days later, that whole area that we had just been sitting to take our break had fallen down the mountain and the route was completely different. So those are very real and, uh, objective dangers that, that you have no control over, which is why we climb those areas at midnight, two in the morning while everything is as frozen together as possible to kind of mitigate it as best we can. Man, that's fascinating. So the route, yeah, I mean, so the route. Going up there is, uh, But I guess above a certain point, it's never the same, right, because of the changing – the topography changes, I guess, because of the ice and the snow and all that. Wow. Yeah. I mean the ice falls in the most dangerous section, but even then when you get above that onto the flatter part, you're still on the glacier. Yeah. So we're making our way through all these undulations, but you're still – at any point in time, a crevasse could open up and you could fall through. True. We're all roped together and all that, and we're on safety lines clipped in, but those are only as good as they can hold. Right. And so even on the way down, as I was coming down in the dark on summit day, hopping over some different tracks, and you shine down with your headlamp, and you can't see the bottom. And same thing on the way up. You look down in some of these chasms as you're crossing the ladder bridge, and it's 80, 100 feet deep if you can see the bottom. And then oftentimes you don't. You can't. And so – That is the most, you know, realistic and ever-present danger to you. Beyond that, probably avalanches. The first day we got there, and I didn't tell my family any of this until afterwards, but, you know, you're surrounded on three sides by different Himalayan peaks. You know, Everest is off to your right, but you're surrounded on those three sides, kind of this bowl at the end of the valley, and there's just avalanches popping down all the time, day and night. Right, and so there was a season, it was either 2014 or 2015, where avalanche actually hit base camp and killed a bunch of people in camp. And so that's also another just, you know, you have to be aware of these things going into it. There's no way to mitigate that, you know, the mountains will do what they do. And so that's the next most present danger, you know, whether at base camp or all the way up the mountain, you know, it gets much more dangerous as you head farther up. Yep. And also... one of the reasons you want to get through the icefall because the icefall is kind of a choke point that's why it's all broken up yep and then you have huge hanging rock on either side too so there's always a danger of rock fall so if if the icefall wasn't dangerous enough then you could be. hit by rocks coming off the mountain as well zinging down at you so and then yeah you know, frostbite uh like i'm i'm dealing with frostbite recovery right now pretty significant case um so i'm kind of down hard right now uh wasn't something i necessarily expected uh but but it's something that i'm i'm dealing with and then outside of that you know just elevation the higher you get it can it can cause all kind of weird things in the body i had some folks that weren't able to even try to summit because they had different blood clots that came up just uh. they'd already been to the mountain before it wasn't their first rodeo but you know your body, adapts differently um depending on the, the situation and you know sometimes it's just a roll of, the dice yeah yeah how how different is it in terms of um is is it a matter of degree in terms of the time or is it is it significantly more difficult than the other uh the other expeditions you went on so if you like compare you know your your south america trips versus everest um is is. the actual mountain more dangerous or is it just that it takes much longer to do it i think all the above um it because of the amount of time that you spend there you you are exposed to that much more hazard you know the longer the expedition is the the more that you open the opportunity to be you know affected by altitude or rockfall icefall you name it um so that's that's where you know my friends that i just spoke to came into play were with blood clots and so on they they hadn't had. that because they hadn't been on such longer expeditions yeah um same with me right i i've, been to big mountains i've been to, nali twice and to akankagua twice now, in South America, you know, 20,000 plus meter peaks and been very, very cold before, but never had to deal with frostbite. My frostbite that came off of the Everest summit was due to exposure. You know, a normal summit day may be only 12, 14 hours, but I was on the move for 27 hours straight. And so just that amount of time in the boots was enough to affect me much more significantly. Got it. But I think overall, Everest was the hardest just mentally because you're there for so long. You know, my longest expedition before that had been three weeks and this was six, seven weeks gone. You know, time gone from your family that affects people differently. Yeah. I spent a lot of time deployed around the world on different platforms. So that didn't affect me as much, but it gets to you. Right. And then just the fact of being in very, very austere environments, like capping on the side of the mountain at 23 feet. Or up at Camp 4 on the Southern Call, where it's just a complete windswept wasteland, essentially. I thought I'd seen cold, but even on a nice weather day, I was fighting, keeping my feet warm, keeping my hands warm, keeping my face warm. I got some frostbite, some light stuff on my ears and frostnip on all my fingers, even though I was trying to manage it the whole day long. So just, yeah, 8,000-meter peak has other dangers that you just may not run into. Say if you're doing a Colorado 14er or in the Cascades, you usually don't run into some of these things unless you're in a big, big environment like Alaska, the Andes, or in the Himalayas. Right, right. Yeah, and by the way, we'll talk about your website a little bit later, but you've got a website. It's got great pictures. You have video, too? Is there YouTube as well? I do. I do. I have YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, everything that we're trying to push more content to. My photographer and videographer, Brian, went to Everest with me. He's a climber also, and he summited with me. We're in the process of shooting a documentary about Project 327. He lives out there in Estes Park, Colorado. I trained with him for about five weeks before we went to Everest because living here in San Antonio at all of about 300 feet above sea level is not the place to train for high mountain. Estes Park is right outside Rocky Mountain National Park at about 7,500 feet. Training at altitude, doing strength training there in Colorado also put me in good stead for Everest. Nice. Nice. Okay. Yeah. More video. Sorry, say that again. All right, more video footage to follow as we're working on kind of our sizzle reel, kind of putting together some highlights from the Everest trip so that we can push out to everybody. Cool. How long have you been back? When did this end? So the expedition ended for me on the 19th of May. That's when I was medevaced by Hilo out from Camp 2 to Kathmandu to start frostbite treatment. Okay. Okay. Damn. So it's been just a couple of weeks. In my tent. Yeah, just not that long, two months maybe. Okay. Okay. Before we get into the details there, let's talk about the training. So how did it go for you? So you started at the gym about a year out from the expedition. And what did you do? Like what did they have you do? I'm assuming standard starting strength and then what? Yeah, standard. assessment right so since i was coming in completely you know fresh um i've been doing my standard you know kind of maintenance uh routines a lot of running and body weight stuff but did the assessment with matt there at the starting strength gym and then just started you. know baselining from there working up you know uh step by step through uh till i got to heavier weights for me and so standard uh you know squat deadlift press bench right uh which you know i had done in some shape or capacity beforehand but realized very quickly that i had been doing it wrong for for a long time um and didn't want to exacerbate any you know injuries that i already had like the injury to my hip from the at uh but also wanted to get that much stronger right and. so just kind of followed the process you know push the the i believe button you, based on you know that the feedback i i'd gotten from my friends there and, Brittany, as my primary coach in the gym, made progress pretty rapidly. I had a decent cardio baseline and was just able to then up what else comes along with it. Also, at the same time, since I retired from the Navy, I listened to a lot of RIP's podcasts and so on and went on TRT as well. And that also kind of helped balance things out and make a lot of progress relatively quickly without getting any further injury. Right, right. Yeah. Do you remember just generally what your starting numbers were? Oh, they were low, probably. Yeah. I mean, really just starting almost from zero. I mean, starting with the bar and then working my way up there from there, especially with that hip injury. You know, I was able to do more upper body, but, you know, kind of working my way up there. Working my way from bar all the way up to, I think. The last numbers I had there were a squat at 270 and then deadlift at 240, 245, which for me, because I'd come back from the Appalachian Trail at 156 pounds. I lost 26 pounds on the trail, came back pretty skinny, and then was able then to start putting on weight pretty rapidly, both in the literal sense there in the gym and then on my chassis. Once the TRT kind of got everything balanced out and was eating right and sleeping well, and so that helped make a huge transition in how I was training and will continue to use that baseline model as I move forward to upcoming trips here. Yeah, so I think that's to be expected, not unusual, right? So you had the hip injury also as essentially an endurance athlete, right? Yeah. The numbers. The numbers starting out are pretty... pretty, uh, pretty usual. Right. And then, um, what else, uh, did they, did they try to convince you or did they convince you to stop your other activities or during that time you're also still doing trail running and, um, and other things. So very, very sparingly, like maybe I might go on a run on Saturday, but I was, uh, training Monday, Wednesday, Friday at starting strength and really kind of giving it my best shot to, to focus, uh, just on the lifting aspect, make sure that my form was good. Technique is good. And then really work on my numbers because, you know, the more I spend time trail running, I could trip over a route and, you know, twist some things. I really wanted to focus just on lifting since that was entirely new to me. Right. And, uh, gave it, you know, my full attention and focus. Cool. Cool. Yeah. That's, that's interesting to talk about because there there's this idea you know, I mean, obviously if, if all things, all things considered, if you are able to, uh, stop your physical hobby hobbies, your physical sports and activities, and only strength train for a period of time. Um, in terms of force production and getting stronger, obviously that's the best possible approach. Uh, and, and for most people, most of the time, that's actually a really good idea. Um, just devote as much time and energy as you can to just building muscle, uh, improving your joint health, looking better, and just focusing on the process of strength training in the context of, of, uh, of, of sports in the context of, of demanding physical hobbies. The truth is it's not realistic to tell somebody. to stop doing everything that they've been doing for three to six months, uh, and drink milk and get their squat up. Right. Because, um, I mean, if they could great, but that's, it's not realistic, especially if you have something on the horizon that's coming up, right. You have to be training, you have to be preparing somehow for that specific thing. And, um, yeah, I mean, in your instance, uh, your, your, uh, But so what I'm trying to do is just kind of make an argument or explanation for why it works so well, even in the context of still doing other things, because you're already a trained athlete. You're already a trained endurance athlete through your time in the Navy and then everything else that you've already done. So essentially, when you look at somebody's baseline, like what is your baseline of activity, I would argue that continuing to trail run on a limited basis, right? It'd probably be a bad idea to do long distance runs multiple times a week or really, really long distances, you know, even once a week. But if you're just sort of maintaining a baseline of your normal activity, which for you, that is a normal activity, and then you layer strength training on top of that, then it's just a matter of balancing the recovery equation, right? Which you've been talking about TRT, you've been talking about eating and gaining weight, right? And this is the hardest part. If you're eating and you're gaining weight. in my book as the strength coach, uh, you're doing what you need to do. So like if you're, if you're strength training and then you're doing your, your other demanding hobbies and your numbers are going up and you're gaining weight and, and things aren't hurting as a result of what you're doing outside of the gym, we're good to go. Right. I think everything's on track and everything's, everything's doing what it needs to do. Um, so, so that's, that's awesome to hear. Did you, did you, you know, I saw it as kind of like re-baselining everything, right. Because as a traditional mountaineer trail runner, um, you know, I wanted to get the best possible shot, you know, really spend some downtime, um, away from those other activities to, to learn as much as I could about how to lift correctly, how to, you know, put weight on quickly so that I could replicate that same success in the future. Right. Because just like you said, if I had just done. lifting Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then continued trail running Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday. Then I would have no downtime, and then I'm 46, so that can't last forever, and I definitely have plenty of miles on the joints already, so really try to step away from my normal activities and relearn or refocus on something new and give that its full attention and do to be able to do this for much longer because everything I've read, and we haven't really touched on you as an aging athlete, strength training is an absolutely essential thing. It's an essential part of really the foundation for everything. If you don't have the strength, you can't do all these other ancillary activities. You have to continue strength training where you get, and that's looking down the road to 50, 60, continue lifting as the primary way to keep that strength going. Yeah, it really is the baseline, most fundamental attribute, and the first sentence in Ripito's book in Starting Strength is physical strength. I don't remember exactly the quote, but it's physical strength is the most important thing. And, you know, it really is in a lot of ways. And especially if if you're putting high demands on your body, it really is the most fundamental attribute. And everything else really is is a derivative of some sort on that. And as you get older, like you don't you don't realize it fully because you can mask a lack of strength in a lot of instances through high skill, high endurance, and then just just, you know, just repetition and just getting really, really good at something. And once once you're no longer able to put in the kind of hours and mileage and time that you did when you were 20 or even 30, now it's like, OK, what do I do now? And you can, you know, when I. Say you, it's not you. It's like, you know, talking to everybody out there, you can keep doing the things that you want and but it's time to let. You said it perfectly. It's time to reestablish your baseline and start working on the baseline, right? So you have to almost look at it as like, let's strip this all down and start working on baseline attributes, first of which needs to be strength. And then that's where you get the longevity aspect coming in. And when I say longevity, I mean like being able to do the things you want to do for as long as possible. So the guy who is stronger at 40, 50, 60 is going to be able to keep doing the things that he wants to do longer than the guy who's not, right? So, you know, I mean, in your mid-40s, how many guys do you know that have had to stop the things that they enjoy because of an orthopedic injury or, you know, just, I mean, generally just lack of strength, you know? Yeah. And I saw for me personally, that was a huge hole in my knowledge base, just that, you know, a lot of people figure this out in their late teens or 20s, right? They go and spend time in the gym lifting heavy. And that was something I always kind of shied away from. I was more. endurance athlete and and that's great and it has its place and i love it but i knew for for long term right that longevity that we've been talking about to do this into my 50s and 60s and so on that i needed a much heavier baseline right of core strength that i was lacking significantly. yep did you notice any changes in your uh trail running performance or your endurance uh training as you started strength training or were you just like um was this just kind of like a sort of maintenance thing for the the running just kind of doing it because you you wanted to maintain baseline um you know some of it was just just the maintenance right just to keep those those chops up but but i did notice that it was easier to just chug out miles right so it's it's easier to go hit 10 15 miles uh because my my hip flexors are that much stronger right so much of trail. running is is in your hips that uh you know a lot of times people forget that you know the chug chug, up and down hills or around corners and rooted rocky muddy areas right so much of that is just core chassis strength um that it really did help with that just to to kind of keep everything tight right um you know especially in that that hip area yep so it did help quite a bit yeah very cool yeah it's been i mean alternately you know that the weight didn't help though so as i was putting on 35 pounds like okay this is what it feels like to run at 180 vice 155 right uh yeah where you. around 155 165 for most of the um i mean had you let me ask you like this have you had you ever been 180 185 before was that the first time you'd been that heavy that's the first time yeah okay so i'd always kind of like my sweet spot was 150 to 160 but again that says that even when i was uh training heavy for denali so much of denali is kind of a a mixed training right a lot of body weight a lot of cardio, a lot of weights because you're carrying about 60 pounds on your back, maybe another 50, 60 in. a sled you're towing behind you. So you need to be, you know, a little bit heavier, but have that same cardio ability. Um, so, but I knew Everest was kind of a different beast. Uh, you're not carrying as much weight on your body. It's just a lot of endurance. Um, but also I know how quickly my body sheds weight, whether it's fat or muscle. And so I needed quite a bit more reserve to be able to burn through. Yeah. Did you, uh, did your training shift into like, uh, so, so if we're looking at the entire year, right. Um, as, as you progress through the program, um, how did your, how did your training outside of the gym change as the date got closer? Did you do more? Did you back off on strength training? Could you kind of run us through an overview of the year of, of barbell training and then specific training? Well, I kind of did, uh, barbell training for the first six months. I wanted to completely re-baseline, go kind of move. I moved out of running season because here in Texas, running season ends around April time frame. It just gets too hot. And so starting in about June, I moved into lifting here at home. And then it started July by lifting with starting strength and did that pretty much through November, December. So about six months of heavy barbell training, just with some maintenance runs on the back end to keep that cardio level up. And then I switched over to my normal routine, which is very focused. They have a 19-week plan just for Everest. And that has a lot of mixed weights, a lot of box steps, a lot of running, kind of all the above to mix all those different disciplines in and get together. It's very CrossFit-esque, but tailored specifically to high altitude mountaineering. Okay. But definitely had... Thank you. An easier time going into that with a much larger chassis and that experience behind me as I'm lifting here at home, not not always the same press bench squat deadlift. Right. But variations of which and it made it a lot easier and a lot safer for me to not get injured. So oftentimes I would have to build in extra time to the training cycle as I'm doing these crazy workouts six days a week, oftentimes two days. But I never got injured this go around because I already had that much more solid chassis to dive into than the normal running. Sure. Yeah. So you're looking at. So if my math is right, you're maybe nine weeks, 12 weeks of that kind of workout programming leading up to it. Yes. OK, cool. Cool. And then also just hiking at altitude, being there in Colorado for the last five weeks. Yeah. I would train in the gym for five, six days a week and then also alternatively go up to anywhere from 12,000 to 14,000 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park or hike some of the other Colorado 14ers in the wintertime with my videographer to get some laps in in the natural environment. Awesome. Yeah, so going into it. So now actually preparing and getting things ready, and this is totally subjective obviously, but how did you feel from a preparation standpoint versus in prior expeditions? I would say versus prior expeditions that I had no doubts this time. I was much more confident having that extra muscle on board and just not having injured myself at any point. Really during that workup from starting with. starting strength and for the six months there it helped me get through that hip injury yeah which would have been much more difficult to to deal with um in the high altitude and so not only did it help me heal that injury but also kept me from kept me from sustaining any other further injuries along the way throughout and including uh summit day right so especially for for this climb is i knew from when i started with starting strength all the way through summit day you know. you you're training now for essentially 10 minutes it's on top of everest you know i was holding up there for about 10 minutes right so i knew every every lift every size right is all for a very narrow window but that's when i'm training for a year just for that very narrow window so i have to do all of these things correctly every day every time so that, i can give myself the best possible opportunity to summit, And then get back down safely. Right, right, right. So that's, again, why I went with starting strength, because I need, you know, you're all's level of expertise and individual, you know, one-on-one training to help, you know, give me that confidence as a lifter, help train safely, and then build those things up in a very measured and controlled fashion instead of just me slinging weights in the gym and hoping for the best. Yeah, it's funny, because I don't know if anybody's really noticed yet, but we, like, you had this hip injury, and it's almost like an afterthought, like, in the context of this whole thing. You know, you went through the barbell training. I'm assuming it's resolved for the most part now, if not completely resolved. And then, you know, something like that, in typical circumstances with typical people, you get a hip injury, and it's kind of like, in a lot of ways, it's like, okay, this is the end. This is the deal now. It's sort of the beginning of the end. Did you even think about the hip on the climb? Was it just all good? No. It was completely healed. Something I didn't say earlier was that I'd actually been going through, from the time I got off the AT, I'd been going through physical therapy a couple times a week to try to resolve the injury. That was only getting me so far. What got me across the line was doing strength training to help work my way through it and past it. And so come time on the mountain, I didn't have any issues with the hips at all. And really, all that extra strength training helped keep those hip flexors strong enough to be able to just push day after day because it's a lot of cumulative effect. Your body doesn't recover at altitude, especially altitude in the Himalayas. So you have to be able to sustain that repetitive effect day after day and that cumulative load. And I just... Not to say I wouldn't necessarily have summited, but I really kind of wonder if that would have been in the cards had I not had such a strong foundation going into it. Yeah, man. Before we talk about kind of the way down and what happened, let me ask you this. You have 10 minutes on the summit. And is that just because there's so many people or you got to hurry up and get back down? And what's it like being up there? What do you do? When you get to the top, are you just like so beat up and so tired that you're just like can't even enjoy it? Or like what's that whole experience like? So it was kind of surreal, right? I have been looking and thinking about Everest really since my first mountaineering experience was at Mount Rainier, which is where a lot of people kind of start at. And the guy that I was climbing with is named Lakparita Sherpa. At the time, he had the speed record on Everest. I already summited like eight times. And so I'm climbing with this guy and we're climbing into essentially a whiteout. And you know, here it is this Sherpa. that's climbed Everest X number of times. It's like, I don't know if we should be doing this. And I'm like, well, that's fantastic. You know, cool, we're gonna keep going, because he thought it was safe enough. Right, that's like my first introduction, to a real Everest mountaineer. And my next trip kind of same discussion, everybody around the campfire is talking about, you know, what they wanna do someday. So it's been in the back of my mind for probably 15 years, since I started mountaineering. And so I'm a big history nerd. I've read numerous books about mountaineering history, especially Everest all the way back to the 20s and 30s, and Mallory and Irving. And so to walk the same footsteps as they did was a huge thing for me. But then especially when you start to get up there and you realize like, oh, this is real. actually doing this you know it goes from base camp okay we're here anybody can hike here you starting your way through the icefall and into camp one camp two and when you get to camp three you're on the let's say face so you're. about a 45 55 degree incline kind of perched on the side of the mountain and then above that is camp for the South call it 26,000 feet in the death zone, where your body is literally breaking itself down and you can only survive up there for so long and so the whole thing was a pretty surreal but then on summit day you walk out of the tent and you see the the string of headlamps up the mountain and you realize like oh this is actually doing this you know I'm not just fantasizing or or dreaming about this anymore now it's now it's. time to do this and make it happen and you get up through and you get to the balcony which is like right around 29,000 feet that's where the Hillary step used to be before it fell away, earthquake a couple years, ago. But there were so many people there. It was the first clear weather window day. And if you've seen the movie Everest, you know why exactly you have to have clear weather, because it gets real nasty real quick and very deadly. But it was choked with people because it was the first clear. day. And so I got to the summit. It was a long slog up there because of the amount of people that were up there. And so I had only taken a couple of photos, one video for all my kids to call out. And so it was very surreal, but I was very, very aware, unlike any other climb, that the clock is ticking. You're on a timer up there because I'm on oxygen the whole time. If I lose oxygen, things get really bad really quickly. I popped my mask for a second to maybe. get a video from my kids, and I was out of breath almost immediately. They say the mask drops you down 3,000, 4,000 feet or more. Yeah. But when you pop it off, you're at 29,000 feet immediately, and it's very hard to deal with. So I was very aware, hey, we need to turn this thing around and start heading back down because I'd already hiked past a couple bodies by that point. And so it's a very real reminder to not spend all day up there. And so I started making my way back down, but really took it all in while I was up there. But was so kind of focused on my safety and making sure that I not only make the summit, but make it all the way back down. I always promised my wife and family I'll come back with all my fingers and toes and just come back for one. Unlike some of the folks that I'd passed on the way up, that was much more up close and present than it had been in previous climbs. I'd seen people that had fallen on the mountain before, and it hadn't affected me as much as Everest. Because it is... somewhat prevalent so things that you read in the press or otherwise are true right you see buddies up there and I did not want to add to the list there so it's like all right we've taken our video taking a couple photos it's time to go yeah because it already been a long day at that point with a much longer day in front of me so start to finish it was about 27 hours and I think you know all that time in the boots was was why I ended up getting frostbite but it was it. was a beautiful climb it was great people asked me what I do it over again even despite what happens like yeah absolutely it's kind of one of those things that people dream about forever whether they get to do it or not and I know people you know the people I mentioned earlier that that had some medical issues that was both of their second time on the mountain they may not get a third shot right so I was able to do it once and done right and so you know it's a very small list of people I'm not one for for peak bagging yeah I climbed a lot of hills I climbed a lot of hills I climbed a lot of hills I climbed a lot of stuff outside of the seven. summits. Um, but it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience to walk in the same shoes, as Hillary and Tenzing in 1953 and reach the same summit as so many other people that I've looked up to for so long. That's awesome, man. That's really cool. Um, yeah, I mean, if, if, if something happens up, up there, um, nobody's coming to get you, right. And, and people, I mean, can you be carried down? Um, so it, it depends on where you're at, right. So you're, uh, above, uh, camp three or one-on-one with their Sherpa. So, um, my, my Sherpa was, was there right alongside me the whole way through. And really they, they are very, uh, undersung in that, um, my guy's name is Ming Midorji. And I can guarantee, like, I would have not, not have made it there and back in the city. Um, and, fashion, um, without Ming Midorji. Um, they are, um, absolutely integral to, to us as, as foreign climbers to get up to the top safely and then back down. And, uh, so yeah, it's a completely different experience than any other mountain, any other mountain. It's, it's me on my own, you know, with my team, but essentially you're under your own cognizance to get up there safely and back. Whereas here it is much more of a, of a team effort, um, to, to, he's looking out for me, but I'm also looking out for him at the same time. He had a, a regular issue on his, uh, his, uh, gas mask that I was able to, uh, identify and help with. So it is kind of looking out for each other to, to make sure we all get up there, uh, and down safely. So, um, yeah, tell us about the, uh, the, the frostbite and the, um, the, the medevacs. Was that due to the frostbite? Yes. Yeah. So I've been, like I said, to Denali in Alaska twice, to Aconcagua down in the top of the Andes twice. I've been in some very, very cold environments, like negative 40, and so I thought I'd dealt with cold before. I've had cold feet before on my summit day there on Everest. My feet got cold, so I was stamping my feet in the snow, kind of kicking, trying to force some blood down into them, and thought everything was good. Everything felt fine, still had feeling. Even if they were a little bit numb, that's kind of a normal thing, especially on the way down. So the way up, I summit at 9 a.m., so that was probably about 12 hours in, but it took me another 15 hours to get down from the summit. And I thought the sensation of my toes was just from toe bangs. So when you're going down the mountain, your toes just like hit the front of your boot, and they just kind of numb out after a while. So I— I thought that's what it was, but I got down, finally down to Camp 2 for the night at about 1130 at night and was in my tent kind of stripping off my summit suit, you know, all the wet clothes because you want to put on dry clothes when you sleep. And then that's when I noticed as I pulled off my socks that they were blistered and turning purple or white depending on the shape of them. I was like, okay, it's nearly midnight. They can't medevac me from here. So I went to sleep. The next morning, I called over our head Sherpa, and as soon as he popped his head into the tent, he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, man, you got to go. And so I was able to call back to my travel insurance company, and within the hour, they had a helicopter there to pick me up at Camp 2. Oh, wow. And so, yeah, I bring all that up because Camp 2, which is about 21,000 feet where we were at, is the highest point that they can land a helicopter at. They can pick you up at Camp 3 at about 23,000 feet, but you've got to be long-lined. You get clipped, and there's like a 30-foot rope up to the helicopter, so you're just swinging around. And you can die from exposure if you're hanging underneath the helicopter if it goes too fast or too long. So Camp 2 is where you want to be safely. That's why it was a 27-hour day from Camp 4 to Summit back down to Camp 2. So, yeah, I got choppered out, had my own private helo. They brought me back to Lukla, changed out pilots, and then flew me to Kathmandu. They met me there at Kathmandu with an ambulance and brought me over to the hospital. And there they immediately recognized that it was frostbite, and I was there for five days undergoing treatment. So kind of warm water baths, a medicine called Iloprost, which is a vasodilator, to kind of help open up all the capillaries and everything in your feet to force more blood into the affected tissue. And then just fresh drafts. Because you have frostbite creates blisters. It's like a cold burn. Yeah, but it creates blisters and you don't want anything to pop and then because then they can get infected. So they just wrap my feet up. And then so kind of helped stabilize me over those five days. And then I was able to come home two days after that. And then I've been here in San Antonio doing self care, but also got in over at the local army treatment center here because. military city USA to have fantastic military medical services here and with a VA. So I'm actually doing hyperbaric chamber treatment every day, Monday through Friday, and then also seeing the burn unit and ortho. So it is a very long term kind of treatment. I'm taking the more traditional like to Nepalese approach, whereas, you know, kind of what the Sherpas do where they take a kind of three to six month look instead of the Western view of where. they just cut everything off. Oh, okay. Western medicine, they just want to cut everything free and then start your follow-on care from there. But the Nepalese take a much longer look because their whole livelihood is tied up in their ability to go back to the mountains with as much as possible. Right. And same kind of thing, right? As a trail runner and as a lifter, I want as much to still be there so I have that solid base for footing. Yeah, how many toes were affected? All 10, right? So I have stage four frostbite and with that, it was across all 10 toes. To date, I've lost an end of one toe and then a couple more are coming to follow here in the not too distant. But they're much better than had I just allowed them to cut everything. I got you. So it's a long-term thing. It's not super exciting. You know, personally going through it, But it's kind of the cost of doing business sometimes. Anytime you go to a big mountain, you run the risk of these things happening. In the grand scheme of things, losing a couple small bits of toes is not hugely detrimental. I'll still be able to lift, I'll still be able to run, and so on and so forth. It just comes with the territory. Two months back-ish, how much pain are you in with the frostbite? It's pretty minimal now, not only because of the hyperbaric chamber treatment. that kind of like super oxygenates your blood to help with the recovery, but also just as the ends have kind of died and desiccated, then those nerve endings die as well. When I got back, it was pretty painful, but now it's relatively benign. It's just more of a maintenance phase as I'm waiting for the body to heal itself. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Cool, man. Well, um, as far as, uh, before we get into what's going on with you now, and then what, uh, what's, what are the plans for the future? Uh, anything else you want to talk about in terms of the, the expedition and the trip? Uh, just that, you know, I, I looked around at everybody, right? You're, you're there with hundreds of people and, uh, from all over the world and just, you know, kind of when you hit back on that level of baseline training is really the key to a success in mountaineering in this case, right? Because I saw a lot of people that just didn't have much in the tank at all. Yeah. And they really had to lean heavy on their. Sherpas to, to help them back down the mountain. And some people, you know, to the point of full, physical failure because they'd only trained enough to, to get to the summit and not enough in the tank, you know, to, to get back down safely, which is the most important part. Right. Um, and so just want to kind of hit on that again, because it's all about, you know, start to finish getting getting to the top is only halfway and you know really kind of not over trained for this trip but made sure that i have enough not only to keep myself safe but those. around me that were supporting me because anytime i fail then they have to dip into their reserve as well right and that that can call you know their safety and even their life into jeopardy yep so you know it really is a team sport and so putting your best foot forward as as well as you can and starting strength with a huge component of that to make sure that i didn't falter it's very cool that's great to hear man um what is uh tell us about project 327 and uh what you got going on. and what's your what are your plans uh so project 327 is something i came up i come back home um for my last deployment uh which was in february, afghanistan i was like okay i know i'm getting towards the end of my navy career there's something, I need to do. I can't just go back and keep doing this after I retire. A lot of my friends go back into government service. That's just not in the cards for me. I am a dirtbag at heart. I went into the Navy as a skateboarder, dirtbag, and then I left as a mountaineering and hiking dirtbag. So I kind of maintain that consistency. So I came up with this thing. I did some research. I knew a lot of people, a couple people that had already done the Explorers Grand Slam, which is the seven summits around the world, the highest on every continent, and the North and South Pole. I was like, okay, there's like 53 people that have done the Explorers Grand Slam, and then there's X number of people that had done the Triple Crown of hiking. But then cross-referencing the two, nobody had ever done both together. because the hiking world is the hiking world, and the climbing world is the climbing world, and they don't cross paths. They're completely different genres of people, really. Okay. So I was like, okay, well, maybe I can do that, right? I grew up in East Tennessee, just outside the Smokies. I spent a lot of time on the AT, just hiking sections and so on. And so it was very natural. And my dad had wanted to hike the AT as a young man. And so it just never happened for him. And it was something that was always kind of the back of my mind. And so I was like, okay, well, when I retire, then maybe that's what I'll do. Because I don't want to just jump straight into some other soul-sucking job. And I wanted kind of a break between my period of service after 25 years in the Navy and then whatever career I had next. So I'd done as many mountains as I could do while I was active duty. But then to do these large expeditions like Everest, you really need more time off. And so 327 is the triple crown of hiking, the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide, which are about 9,000 miles of hiking here in the U.S. The two is the North and South Pole. And then the seven are the South Pole. summits. In this case, I'm doing the not traditional seven summits, but the harder mountaineer seven summits, which includes Carson's Pyramid in Indonesia, because that's a real mountain as opposed to the one that's in Australia. That's like a day hike. So I try to make it as hard as possible. So I'm halfway through. Everest was the halfway point. I've done. six of the 12 objectives, the one hike AT, and then five of the seven summits. So I'm kind of right at the halfway point. I was supposed to start the Pacific Crest Trail last week, but because of frostbite and toes that are popping off, then not so much. I'll do that next spring. And then I'll probably go to Antarctica this January and do the South Pole and Mount Vincent, the highest on Antarctica in the winter, provided that my. recovery goes well. Wow. That's amazing. Very cool. And people can follow along on your website and your YouTube channel? Yes. What's the website? It's grandexplorerscrown.com. We're about to relaunch the website. It's still up. We'll keep it up in the meantime. But about to relaunch the website. And we'll have a lot more of the Everest and otherwise footage. My videographer, Brian, came with me on Everest. He was there with me in Carson's Pyramid in Indonesia back in October. And also with me on Aconcagua a couple years ago. So he's been climbing with me for a couple years now. And we're in the process of shooting a full-length docu-pic that hopefully we can get to Netflix. And then to the new festival there in Boulder in a couple years coming up. So we'll see where that goes. But trying to shoot the full doc. So he was just here last week shooting some footage. me in the hyperbaric chamber kind of documenting the recovery efforts and then you know moving forward into the next objective very cool man yeah what's the plan for training um what what are you thinking for the next uh i don't know next six months next year because your next big one will be you said the spring yeah so i'll be um hopefully if if everything goes well uh that i can get back to uh project objectives so i can get my first pull you ski the last 60 miles to the. south pole you ski the last degree and then after you do that then you go do uh mount vincent which is the highest there in antarctica so that'll give me two more that'll be eight of the 12 so i'll be you know two-thirds of the way through at that point and then in march start the hike from mexico up to canada on the pacific crest trail kind of through the sierras and then up through the cascade mountains um which will be uh you know completely different it's a completely different, mind shift to go from, you know, the bottom of the world out on the icy plains to the. Mexican border, hiking up through the desert. But, uh, that, that's what I like about it. You know, it's not, you don't get bored. I'm not just a mountaineer or not just a hiking dirt bag, but you know, all the, all the, the two, they're really different worlds. And I appreciate like meeting people from those different genres. Yep. Yeah. Um, let me ask you in terms of like, uh, training preparation, what, what are you planning on doing? So, uh, same kind of thing, right? So I really did enjoy, uh, you know, learning something completely new, uh, through starting. strength and, and having that heavy baseline. And I'll, you know, as soon as I can put full pressure back on my feet, my, my toes are healed up. That's the first place I'll start at again, um, back with him because I realized, you know, especially as an aging athlete, um, as I get ready to start training for, uh, the, uh, animal. our trip, I'll be 47, right? And so I really do need that level of baseline, I've come to realize pretty quickly, to be able to underpin everything else, to put that kind of body weight on, you know, the more body weight I carry, the warmer I'll, you know, same thing on Everest, the more I have on me, the warmer I will be, you know, down in Antarctica, right? You know, when you're only 5% body fat, it's really hard to stay warm. Yep. So, yep. You know, I always try to carry a lot extra on me. And the same thing when I hike, you know, I, my wife always jokes with me that like, hey, you're, you're getting kind of fat, like, well, it's just reserve layers on top of the muscle, right? Because, you know, she saw me before the AT and after I left for the AT just fat, full dad bod, and then came back 26 pounds lighter with full V cuts and, and abs and everything. Right, right. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I need all that extra and to, to build up because my body just churns, muscle and fat very quickly. I'll do the same exact thing. Keep with the TRT. Get back to, heavy strength training solely before I start mixing in the other disciplines because I found that that is the best way for me to kind of re-zero and get over any kind of injuries that. may be nagging me before I move on to the next thing because those other training regimens I do are more susceptible to injury. A lot more dynamic exercises. I really need that heavy core to be able to move on to the next phase. Very cool, man. I really appreciate you going through this with us, man. This is great. It's really, really interesting stuff. Is there anything else you want to tell people? Is there anything else we should talk about? Yeah. I'm kind of hitting. around a couple times that, yeah, I'm a veteran. My wife is a veteran. My coach there, starting straight. strengthen her husband. Her husband is still active duty, but she is a veteran. What I'm also doing through Project 327 is fundraisers for disabled American veterans. With that, to be able to pay it back forward for those that have served before and those are coming off active duty. I do fundraisers for them and there's a link on my website to donate if people feel so. inclined. Different from some of the other different veterans organizations, the absolute bulk of the money that comes to disabled American veterans goes directly to those support services, and not to paying some other salary or you name it, position within the organization. I'm a big believer in what they do. They definitely helped me during my transition out of the service and same with my wife. As a veteran and especially here in military service. Especially USA and San Antonio feel the need to kind of pay back. it back forward. Um, so always looking for opportunities to, to be able to support them and, uh, you know, my brothers and sisters in arms. Yeah. Very good. Give us the URL one more time of your website for anybody who, uh, who is now interested in going to your website after that. Yeah. So it's, uh, grand explorers, crown.com. All right. Grand explorers. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. All right, man. Well, thank you very much. That was great. Um, um, if you folks, if you have any, uh, questions or comments, please send them to podcast at, ssgyms.com and to, uh, follow, uh, David and his adventures go to, I'm going to mess this up. It's a lot of words. Grand explorer. What is it? Sorry. I should've wrote it down. Grand explorers, crown.com crown. I'm missing the crown. Yeah. Grand explorers, crown.com. And it's David Phillips. So Google email me, whatever. We'll, we'll, we'll get. you connected if you want to if you want to see what's going on all right well thanks again folks we will see you next time and david thanks again for joining us man thank you so much nick i appreciate it all right man thanks