- Our first guests had the
entire world talking last week
after becoming the first people
to accomplish
what everyone thought
was impossible.
Take a look.
- An incredible
record-setting climb,
a story we've been following
from the start.
- Kevin Jorgensen
and Tommy Caldwell
entered the record books
on Wednesday,
the first to free climb
the Dawn Wall
of Yosemite's El Capitan.
- We're at the base
of the Captain.
- Today's the day.
Piece of cake.
[singing]
- I was left
To my device
- There's this crazy
arctic windstorm
happening today.
- It's easy
to get frustrated,
because you'll feel
totally fine
and then your foot
will just unexpectedly pop off.
The pitch of the day
was 15,
which is the second hardest
pitch on the wall.
Tommy totally crushed it.
It was the smoothest
I've ever seen him climb.
- It takes 14 little
micro-handed foot moves
to get across that face.
- He's got this right hand hold
that's just three fingers wide
and a total razor.
- Everything has to click,
and everything has to be done
absolutely perfectly.
- Whoa!
[cheering]
- That's pretty intense.
- You know,
thoughts crossed my mind
that I should
just throw in the towel
and support Tommy
to the top,
but it's been six years
and hundreds of days,
and I really want to do
this thing.
I'd been picturing
what it was gonna be like
to climb that last ten feet
to the summit,
and I remember
grabbing the very top
and just pausing for a minute,
making sure it was real,
and then
the cheers erupted.
[people cheering]
- In their first
sit-down interview,
please welcome Tommy Caldwell
and Kevin Jorgensen.
I, like the entire world,
was watching you
try to accomplish it,
and I just thought,
"Why?"
[laughter]
- I think I got to quote
Johnny Cash:
"If you're gonna be dumb,
you better be tough."
For me, it was--
it was a family thing.
I started doing it from the time
I was a little kid.
My dad was a mountain guide,
so I grew up in the mountains,
and it's kind of what I knew.
- Have you always wanted
to do that as well?
- Well, with this project
specifically,
I saw a short film
featuring Tommy,
so I just gave him a call.
I'm like,
"I think he needs a partner."
- So you didn't really
know each other.
- We had met briefly,
but we didn't know
each other well.
- Now, what's
a typical day like?
What time do you wake up,
and how long do you climb
before you stop
and pitch a tent?
- On this wall, we wanted
to climb when it was cold
because the friction,
when you grab
those tiny, little holes,
is way better.
So we kind of wake up leisurely
and drink coffee in the sun
and watch the--
watch the sun rise,
and we'd have these
really nice mornings,
and then in the evenings,
it would get really tense
with our trying to accomplish
the pitch that we needed to do
that day.
- Yeah, exactly.
- And I understand at night
you would drink whiskey
and watch Netflix.
- A bit of that.
- That was
our New Year's Eve party.
- Oh, I see.
- Yeah.
- 'Cause I was gonna say,
"You can't drink whiskey
every night
and then climb a mountain."
- [laughs]
- Just a little bit
of whiskey.
- The tiniest bit.
- You can't put a price
on morale.
- Yeah.
So what's the scariest moment
that you had up there?
- We had some really cold days,
or cold nights,
where all the water
from the top of El Capitan
would freeze
to the wall,
and then when the sun
would hit,
we had a little bit
of ice fall,
so that was sometimes scary.
The ice chunks would come off
and kind of whiz by us.
I don't think it was actually
super dangerous, though.
- Um...
[laughter]
There's nothing about this
that wasn't super dangerous.
And I have to say,
please explain.
So when you were a kid,
how did you cut your finger off?
What happened?
- So when I was, like,
21 years old,
I cut it off
with a table saw,
and it was this crazy moment
in my life,
because I wanted nothing more
to be a full-time climber.
I just wanted to travel
the world and climb.
I was living out of a car.
And then I chopped
off my finger,
and I was like, "Oh, man,
this could be over."
But while I was in the hospital,
a doctor came up to me,
and he kind of said
the same thing to me.
He was like,
"You should really think about
what else you want to do
with your life."
- That's crazy.
Not only did you do it,
you did it with--
I mean, accomplishing something
that a doctor says
you're not gonna be able to do
in your lifetime,
much less that kind
of accomplishment--
Amazing.
Amazing, right?
[cheers and applause]
Well, I'm gonna give you
something.
Next time you're up
on a mountain
and you are watching something
on Netflix or anything,
I have a couple of baskets
for you.
I have a five-year subscription
to Netflix.
I have whiskey.
I have--
[cheers and applause]
I have my book.
[speaking indistinctly]
You'll love it.
