MONICA POLETTI: Hi, everyone.
Thanks for coming.
Today our speaker is Conrad
Anker, climber, mountaineer,
author.
He's summited
Everest three times.
The first time
discovering the body
of George Mallory,
British climber who
went missing 75 years
earlier before you found him.
Is that correct?
Third time without using
supplemental oxygen.
You might know him from
really beautifully documented
first ascent of Shark's Fin
on Meru Peak, and he also,
in addition to being a
great outdoorsman, really
likes the mountain community
and working on it, promoting it,
and founded the Khumbu
Climbing Center in Nepal
in 2003 with his wife and
continues to do really good
work there promoting
responsible, safe mountain
climbing.
And today we're going to
hear him talk about Everest.
So Conrad, welcome.
Thank you for being here.
Floor's all yours.
[APPLAUSE]
CONRAD ANKER: Thank you,
Monica, for the introduction.
That's one of the better ones.
Sometimes people go to Google.
They pull up Conrad Anker,
and they'll sit there,
and they'll read off of it for--
I mispronounced it or anything.
You did a great-- keeping
it subtle and understated.
Sunil, thank you so much
for being a host here.
I really appreciate
everything you've done
and the chance to
revisit the Google
campus 10 years after the
first time I came and spoke
to Google climbers, and
there's more people here,
more people doing great
things, more people
sharing their passion
for knowledge and science
with the greater world.
And to Mike, who is the AV
guy here, thank you so much.
So all of you guys
are really wonderful.
So today we will
delve into Everest.
So it's kind of Everest season
as it is, and people always
speak about Everest
this time of year.
It's the time of year that
people are always on there
to go climbing.
As Monica mentioned, I
have a special connection.
I've been there three times
on three climbing expeditions,
and then also
subsequent expeditions
where I've worked
with media, but to set
the stage from an earth
sciences standpoint--
and I like Earth sciences--
Mount Everest, or Chomolunga,
as is known in Tibetan
Sherpa language,
or Sagarmatha, as it
is known in Nepal,
is a result of plate tectonics
in the Indian subcontinent
moving northward at about the
speed our fingernails grow,
which, if you're
a fan of geology,
that's supersonic speed.
It's moving really fast.
And all that effort of the
Indian plate moving northward
and subducting into
the Asian land mass
has created the Himalayas,
and Everest itself
is a relatively young mountain.
It's anywhere between
70 and 90 million years
that that uplift has happened.
And the summit of Everest
itself is marine limestone.
There's shale.
There's Ordovician
limestone that's
approximately 270
million years old
that used to be the shallow
inland sea, the Tethys sea,
off the northern part
of the Asian land--
the Indian plate that
then is being crunched up.
So it's not going upward as
much as it's going northward,
and so there's a deep
root in the mountain,
and then there's
also, as it moves up,
it has to go somewhere.
So imagine if you're at
the table with your kids,
and you have the tablecloth, and
you push the tablecloth in one
direction, and it crunches up,
that's how these mountains are
formed.
And when you're in the
Himalayas, and you look around,
and you can tell
the relative age
and how active a
mountain range is
by how jagged the skyline is--
so as we look at the pictures
here in the Himalayas you'll
see that it's really jagged
and everything, where
you go to someplace
like the Appalachia, which
is one of the oldest mountain
ranges on the Earth that's in
the process of eroding away,
is really an example
of all the mountains
eventually turn into
the sea, and they
get recycled, and subducted,
moved around again.
So that's one of
the neat things I
like about climbing-- is we
have this very direct connection
to land mass.
So if you're out
climbing, you're on a rock
that's-- if you're in Yosemite,
it's 90 million years old.
You go out in Kenya
where I live it's
two and a half billion
years old, which predates
atmospheric oxygen.
So just to be
able to have that time frame
kind of puts into space
how insignificant one is.
This clip here is of the
Khumbu Glacier in Nepal.
This is a project I did
with the Extreme Ice Survey
where we set up
time lapse cameras,
and so this is a
two year time lapse.
And you can see how the main
Khumbu icefall is moving there.
So this is the way
that we can then
use technology to give us data
points and see how things go.
So it's going to
go in reverse here,
and you can see the shadow line
there is the azimuth of the sun
as it moves through, and
you can see how that is.
I'm fascinated by this way
of looking at glaciers,
because glaciers are very
much a part of what we do.
Let's go watch it again
just because it's cool.
And we've got time, and
we're here at Google,
and hello to everyone
out there in the cyber
world that's following along,
but you can look at this.
You can see how things change.
This is a two year period
where they're watching it,
and how the cryosphere,
which is the scientific word
for the land of
ice that's up there
and how it's changing--
and one of three ways
that we can measure glaciers--
or this is the time lapse.
There's also infrared satellite.
You can see the
pictures in there.
There's historical
repeat photography,
so we can go back
to the earliest
pictures that were
taken and then
compare it to where we are now.
And the high latitude and high
altitude areas of our planet
are taking a greater hit from
the changing and the warming
climate than many other places.
So it's one of these
things that, to me, I'm
always aware of it.
And this old joke
in bazooka gum--
remember, they have the
cartoons wrapped in them,
those little bricks,
and if they got
stale, they'd break your
teeth-- but they wrapped around
one of those was, how
do mountains hear?
And it said mountaineers.
And I read that at like age 14.
I've always kept that
in mind, and now it's
sort of a mission
in life because I'm
the eyes and ears
of the mountains
out there to share
what's going on with it.
Everest itself was first
measured in 1862-- the Royal
Trigonometric Survey at India.
If you like maps--
of course you do.
You work at Google-- and you
like Earth-- of course you do,
you work herh-- you get a
chance to see how they measured
the Indian subcontinent starting
at the southern tip using
a brass chain taking
into calculations even
things as humidity and
sag in their chains.
So they got to within 90
miles of this mountain here,
and they named it peak 15,
and they measured it out
to be 29,000 feet.
That's what their
calculations came to.
They added two feet to
it because they thought
that no one would believe
it if it was 29,000 feet,
and two feet was within
the margin of error,
but it's interesting to see
that they were less than 1/10
of 1% of when we look at
the height of either 29,028
feet or 29,035, or
8848 in meters or 8858
in meters, which
makes more sense,
but that they were able to get
that accurate of a measurement
within that.
Going on, the surveyor named
it after his predecessor,
Sir George Everest, and
that was the name Everest,
and that is where it came from.
And George Everest himself
was-- he was a humble man.
He didn't appreciate the
mountain being named after him,
but it is a very fitting
name, and so it's
kind of poetic in a
sense that it's Everest
and it keeps on going.
So the initial exploration of
Everest once it was measured
and we knew collectively as
humans the altitude of it,
it began and in 1921.
That was the very
first expedition,
and one climber was part
of all three of them.
Pictured here on--
George Mallory.
He's the second from the
left over here looking
quite rakish with his foot up
on his buddy, and to his right--
left most in the
picture-- is Sandy Irvine,
and they were-- this is
their third expedition,
but this was the first attempt
to climb Mount Everest,
and it was a pretty
special moment.
England had missed
out on reaching
the south pole and
the north pole,
and this was the golden
age of exploration.
Prior to this,
exploration was very much
based upon economic means.
It was there to bring goods
back, to enslave people,
to have cultural imperialism.
There's all these different
reasons why we explored,
but starting in the--
humans, that is--
and starting in
the 20th century it
became this goal to explore
for the sake of exploration
to say you were the
first ones there.
And of course, the south
pole and Mount Everest
are both reasons for that.
I mean, there is no-- Lewis and
Clark went across North America
to see what was there and
how it can benefit humans,
but of course there's nothing
grows at the south pole
nor on the summit of Everest.
So that eventually became
the first expedition-- 1921,
'22, and '24, and my
connection to Everest,
which began in 1999 when
I was part of the Mallory
and Irvine research
expedition-- we
set out to solve the
clue as to whether or not
Sandy Irvine and George
Mallory could have climbed
Everest 29 years before Sir
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing
Norgay did in 1953.
And the 1st of May-- I was at
an elevation of 8,300 meters,
and I came across the frozen,
well-preserved, and desiccated
body of George Mallory.
And while they
did a great effort
at getting there
on the mountain,
they didn't make
it to the summit.
It's my belief just
due to the difficulty
and what went on with it.
After that, there were
several expeditions--
1933, 1936, 1939 through 1945.
We got in a big argument.
We fought wars, and
then we came back,
and it was in 1953 after the
war that on an expedition led
by Sir George Hunt-- was
able to attain the summit.
These are some archival
footages courtesy
of the "National Geographic"
of these early expeditions.
This is the trip
of 1953 going up
and climbing on the mountain.
You can kind of see what it
was like and what they had.
I mean, here they are
having a cigarette up there.
We know better than that
now, but they actually
thought it aided
acclimatization,
so we know better,
but you can imagine
climbing across the
glaciers like that,
looking up onto the
Lhotse faces we see here.
And at the time, when
I was a young man,
climbing Everest was sort of the
end all of what climbing was.
You trained in the mountains,
and you got better,
and eventually if
you got good enough,
you'd go to someplace
like Everest.
And Everest was the
coolest place to go,
and you can imagine what it was
like climbing in these clothes,
and as a young man, I used
to dream of this stuff.
And it was always-- I
guess I was destined
to be a climber
when I was a kid,
and we would make pillow
forts and stuff like that.
And I always pretended
we were in a tent,
and the wind was blowing.
It was totally crazy.
So I just thought I
haven't really grown up.
I'm still out there
playing a lot,
but it was the 29th of May,
1953 that Sir Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay attained
the summit of Mount Everest.
And it was a pretty special
moment for the world.
It was one that was sort of a
relief from the Second World
War exploration.
We'd gotten to the South
Pole and the North Pole
the beginning of the
century, and then
we had Mount Everest in 1953,
and it was great and fitting
that it was Ed Hillary from
New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay,
a Sherpa from Thame
and that part of Nepal
that they together
were on the summit.
And this wonderful image of
Tenzing Norgay on the summit
is pretty iconic.
It's the one that everyone
associates with it.
So keep this picture
in mind, and you'll
see current pictures of
the summit of Everest.
So you could probably Google
up Everest this season, 2016,
and you'd see a lot
of people up there,
and the images, and
the flags, and all
that other stuff up there,
but the joy of it is here.
This is why you want
to climb mountains.
This is Norgay and Hillary after
their ascent in Tengboche--
just the trust,
the companionship,
the smile they both have
in there is really, really
special.
We have this wonderful
picture of when they came back
from the coronation,
and the next slide
does have sound in it.
So Mike and I did
our AV check here,
but we're going to wing it
and see if it does have sound.
If it doesn't have
sound, I'll ad lib.
So let's see if this works.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-The New Zealander
Edmund Hillary
got his first mail and
congratulatory telegrams
from George Lowe,
a fellow countryman
and expedition colleague.
Plus 35 miles from Kathmandu,
capital of Nepal, Hillary
and Tenzing were welcomed
and congratulated
by their fellow members
of the expedition,
and what a bewildering
experience it must all
be for the Sherpa Tenzing to be
carried from a remote mountain
village and plunged into a
welter of official receptions
and speeches.
Tenzing brought the family along
to share in the excitement,
but for all of them
the ordeal wasn't over,
for now came the
inevitable questioning
about that moment
of near disaster
when Tenzing's presence of mind
saved his friend and colleague
from a fatal fall.
-Tenzing and I have been
climbing together a good deal,
and I think we've become
a fairly happy pair.
And this was just one example
of how [INAUDIBLE] and how one
is always protecting the other.
I was leading down
the ice fall, and when
I was crossing a crevasse
a large clump of ice
gave way on which
I was standing,
and I set sent off
down a crevasse.
Well, Tenzing here
was following,
had the rope tight on a very
short time, and pulled me up
so I didn't go very far.
-And how did Tenzing feel up
there on top of the world?
-[SPEAKING NEPALI]
-[SPEAKING NEPALI]
[END PLAYBACK]
CONRAD ANKER:
[SPEAKING NEPALI], which
means in Nepali it was very
good, and I was very happy.
So I left that little clip in.
I mean, I kind of
associate that band music
more with cartoons than
I do press releases.
So we can see how
information went around
the world at that
time, as opposed
to how it is nowadays with the
world of the internet, which
all of you are so an
integral part of it.
That was 1953, the
first ascent of Everest,
and then came in
10 years later was
the American ascent in 1963.
And this was an expedition that
was sponsored by the National
Geographic Society.
Part of it was funding
from individual companies,
and so it was a great
teamwork, but they
started at the edge of the
Kathmandu Valley seen here,
and they marched in
with about 400 porters.
And so nowadays you can fly
in a fixed wing to Lukla,
and it's maybe an 8 to 10
day walk up to base camp,
or you can take a helicopter
up there if you really
want to suffer with
altitude, but it really
was sort of at the
edge of what was known
and what was possible.
And in these days, there was
only one expedition per season,
and it was always
based on a nation.
So one nation would
have the opportunity
to go climbing there, and
that would be that trip.
It wasn't until
the 80s that they
started bringing multiple trips
and then sharing on there.
So moving up
through the icefall.
Now the icefall is
equipped with ladders.
So you have to go
across that and-- still
tricky and dangerous, but they
had to bring a few logs up
there to move
through it, and then
climbing up onto the
Geneva spur and the summit
there in the background,
which was amazing.
And it was first climbed
by the United States
by Jim Whittaker
on the 1st of May,
1963, along with Nawang Gumbu,
his Sherpa partner on that.
They made it to the summit in
pretty much dismal conditions,
and they came down.
That was it, but the story
wasn't over for the US team.
Tom Hornbein and
Willy Unsoeld wanted
to climb the west
ridge, which was
sort of the be all of what you
want to do as a climber-- is
to do a first
ascent, a new route,
and so they set out to
climb the west ridge.
And you see the
two climbers here.
It's basically the sun shade
where the edge of that arete,
going up to the top,
made it to the top,
and they met up with Barry
Bishop, who was at the summit.
And they, along
with Lute Jerstad,
and they then kind of bivvied at
the top, and made it back down.
Some of them suffered
frostbite, but it
was a remarkable expedition
in that it was the first team
to traverse the mountain, and
they opened up a new route.
It was very difficult
and challenging.
So it was a worthwhile
point for the history
of climbing in
the United States,
and to this day is
totally an inspiration.
I was maybe 120 days
old at that time,
so of course, I had no idea.
I don't think I even had
an idea what a crib was,
so I let it be that as
a point of inspiration,
but it's one of
these great things.
They were welcomed back
to the White House.
President Kennedy at the
time was inspired by them,
and then they were
well received.
And then President Kennedy
in a speech in Austin,
Texas when he lined
out the goal to get
to the moon he used the
quote from George Mallory--
"Why do we need to go there?
Because it's there."
And if you get a
chance to look it up,
you can see that
connection there.
And if we think about
it, between 1953,
the first ascent of Mount
Everest with Tenzing
Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary,
to the first ascent of the moon
16 years later on July 29, 1969,
it's a pretty short time frame.
And we went from climbing
a mountain, which
is something that
children want to do
and that humans have been doing
for a long period of time,
to going to the moon, landing
there with less computing
power than we have
in our mobile phones
or on this laptop-- I'm pretty
sure there's more computing
power in this room, not
this campus, than there was
at the Houston control center to
get to the moon, but as a kid,
I was seven years old at the
time, and I was like, whoa,
this is great.
And I remember riding my
bike, and TVs weren't flat,
and they were black and white,
and they flickered, and it came
back, and the pictures of it.
And it was just one
of these moments
that we can do anything.
And that passion for exploration
and that drive for knowledge
is something that we
should never let go.
We should always find out
what's over on the other side
of the river, what's on the
other side of the mountain
range, what's on top
of the mountains.
And that's one of these
elemental forces in humans--
why we are the most
widespread dominant species
on this planet-- but it's
that curiosity and wondering
what we're going to do.
So the future is right here.
You guys are looking
into the nanosphere
and what things can
be done there, how can
we look to the outer parts of
our planet to learn about them.
So bring it up to
the present here.
In 2012, I was part
of an expedition
to visit Everest to celebrate
the 50th anniversary, which
came in 2013.
So we went on the
49th year to be
ready to celebrate it in 2013.
So technically we were off by a
year, but that was a good time.
And our goal was initially to
try to go up the west ridge,
go over the mountain, and then
come back down-- two of us,
Cory Richards and I-- and
then the rest of the team
to the standard route, and
then also to build a science
and educational
component into it.
So our team here-- we tried
to bring as much diversity as
possible, and one thing
that I want to see
is an inclusive
place for mountains,
and mountains are really-- it's
the same mountain for everyone.
And so I'm always like let's
get out there and get after it.
So the time lapse
photography that we
did-- that was part of that.
We're revisiting
the cameras there.
The cameras are set up on
the side of the mountain.
They take a photograph
every half hour,
and then photos
are then taken out,
and these are ways
that we can learn more
about the actual
planet that we live on.
So we need to see a
Google type camera that
was looking over the
icefall in real time,
and so you could see what
it looks like that day,
or you could go into
it, and you could
see how has the icefall moved in
the last six months and things
like that.
So that was working on the
Extreme Ice Survey project
there, and then also with
Montana State University
we conducted a geologic
profile of the limestone that
goes from the summit
down to the contact
zone with the local
granite there.
And Travis Courthouts,
who was a student,
wrote his master's
thesis about this,
so there's more knowledge
about what's going on.
We also worked with the Mayo
Clinic in human physiology
to see how the human body
adapts to externalities.
And in this case, the
externality that we used
was altitude, and
how does it affect
the cardiopulmonary system.
So Dr. Johnson, who's
here, is a friend of mine.
We're going to go back to
Kilimanjaro this coming August
to do more high altitude
physiology work.
One of the neat
things that we're
looking at in that is
altitude is beneficial.
So if you go into a
hyperbaric chamber--
that there is a benefit to it.
So going to altitude I enjoyed.
It is just the rarefied air.
Your heart has to
work a little harder.
You create more red blood
cells, and for someone
that does have heart
disease and they're not
responding to a
pharmacological treatment
that they might be able to
go into a hyperbaric chamber
for a few hours a day
as a form of treatment.
So this is something the
Mayo Clinic is looking into.
I guess we're trying to
justify going climbing,
but at the end of the day,
we're just going out there
because it's fun.
And it's the type
of fun that involves
suffering, so I mean
it's definitely not
sitting on the beach and having
pina coladas with umbrellas
in them.
It's you wake up in the
morning, and you feel miserable.
It's a lot of hard work.
It's dangerous.
You're climbing in the icefall.
There's an example here
of crossing the ladders.
It's one of the scariest
places you can imagine being.
Hilaree O'Neill was with
us on the trip on that,
and then getting up
into the Western Cwm--
this is some of the terrain
that's moving into it.
The Sherpas that are
part of this-- I'll
talk more about their
connection and how
they work in the
mountains, and no climb
would be possible of Everest
without their support,
unless you were to go up
pretty much on your own
and not be able to be there.
So one of the-- last year
there was the earthquake
that took place on
the 25th of April,
and there was an acquaintance,
a friend of mine from Google,
Dan, who was part
of that expedition.
He and I had met, and we
had worked with each other
to give him advice, things
that he might want to do,
how he would best be able
to organize that expedition.
And when the earthquake
hit and ice came off
of the Pumori Lingtren glacier
and the air blast took out
his camp, he lost his life.
And so climbing is
dangerous, and we know that,
but I'd like to thank Dan.
Dan, I'm thinking of
you here in Google.
We talked about this in one way
or another, so it was-- but one
of the other-- the year
prior to that there
was an ice avalanche that
came off this icefall here.
And if you look in the
upper right of center,
there's sort of a
horseshoe there,
and that is a hanging
glacier that comes off
the west shoulder of Everest.
And in this area here,
this is another time lapse
of the glacier moving, just
a really direct one on there.
And you can see how
challenging this is.
It's something that this is
moving approximately a meter
a day, and it drops
400 meters in elevation
over a distance of
about 1,600 meters.
So the icefall is one of the
most active places there is.
This is the location.
Those two fangs that are on
the left of center above-- they
cut loose, and then
the debris came down
into where that oval is.
And it was most unfortunate
because the people that
suffered this were 16 Nepalese,
predominately Sherpa, that
were part of the expedition
that lost their lives on it.
You can see here
this is the terrain.
They moved the icefall into
a different-- the route
through the icefall a slightly
different way this year
to minimize that risk, but
it's kind of a catch 22.
Places that avalanche
in-- they fill in,
so it makes travel easier,
and you can go faster,
but if you're going to where
there's fewer avalanches,
you're in a more
active icefall so you
have greater risk of the ice
towers and things like that
toppling over.
And this is the most dangerous
part from an objective hazard
standpoint of what's available.
I'll talk briefly
about the Sherpas.
This is Danuru Sherpa,
who's a friend of mine.
We were together on our
first expedition in 1999.
He was 19 at the time, and he's
about as big and tall as I am,
and we were there on the Mallory
Irvine research expedition.
And he started out, and
he was-- I was like,
OK, I'm at 17,000
feet, 5000 meters,
I'm going to train to get up
and go running, and laced up
my shoes, and I went
running, and jogged along,
and he was walking side by side.
I was like, OK, so these guys
are a totally different realm
of what we are, but
they are the ones--
they're the backbone of
the expeditions over there.
So any trip to
the Himalayas, you
will interact with
the local people,
whether it's in Pakistan, all
the way to Bhutan, and India,
and Nepal in between,
and north of it,
and they do a lot of the work.
And moving the equipment
up through the icefall
is a tremendous amount of work.
So they do repeated
trips for people,
and one often wonders
why they're doing it,
and it is pretty much a--
it's a market economy.
And so this is a way for
these people to earn income.
And it's hard work,
but they enjoy it also
to a certain degree.
So next up, Monica mentioned
the Khumbu Climbing Center.
And so this is a kind
of a fun little time
lapse of the students
of the Khumbu Climbing
Center doing selfies.
So we put a camera there, and
they had the remote there.
They took a picture
of themselves,
and so this is kind of neat.
These are the students
that we teach climbing to.
We've got to watch it again
just because it's so much fun.
They're all smiling, and so
this is one of the things
that my wife Jennifer
and I started in 2002,
2003, vocational training
for high altitude workers,
knowing that people
are still going
to continue to go
to the mountains,
but to have the good
training and allow
people to have better skills.
And the neat thing about
working with the Sherpas,
they're all very connected, and
they all have mobile phones.
They're all on social media.
They're communicating, and it's
one of these transitions that
has gone from, before
there was landlines,
getting landlines up there would
have been incredibly difficult.
And now there are solar
powered cell towers
and people have mobile
phones, and mobile phones
are ubiquitous.
You can get smartphones, and
you can communicate with them,
and it's really changed how the
mountains are on my first trip
to the Himalayas in
1988 to where we are now
when you kind of
went off the map,
and you sent a
postcard home, and you
hoped your parents wouldn't
get a telex with bad news.
And now you're
basically expected
to have quarterly updates.
That's four times a day,
not four times a year,
about what you're doing,
and what you're seeing,
and how awesome you are,
and so it's kind of changed
what's going on there, which is
an interesting way to see it,
but the benefit of mobile phones
is that they are an equalizer.
Whether you're a fisher
person in Kenya knowing
what the market
price is or you're
using it is for
microfinance, there's
great things that
benefit from it.
And I have a Nepali cell phone
that I have in Kathmandu,
and it's saved-- all
my numbers saved.
And I open it up, and people
that I work with, I call them
up, and they'll meet me.
So communication and connection
is a really good part of it.
This is sort of a closeup
of teaching the climbing
techniques.
We run the program in
the middle of winter.
So we climb on
frozen waterfalls.
One, it's steeper than
the actual climbing
on Everest itself so
it's a great place
to practice the
techniques that you need,
and it's also a time of
year that the people are not
working on the mountains.
They generally work
pre and post monsoon,
and then during
the summer they're
attending their land
and their flocks of yaks
and living that
agricultural life,
but ultimately we
began this program
because we wanted to avoid
this, which is the loss.
This woman's husband died
climbing on the mountain,
and there's nowhere in
the Khumbu and especially
the upper Khumbu
that there isn't
a family that has
not been affected
by loss in the mountains.
And when you have
the wage earner that
is killed in the
mountains, it's a really
difficult-- it affects
the whole community,
and this is something that,
having been through loss
myself, [INAUDIBLE] with
Alex and having seen how that
affected our family and
where it is, it was very much
something that we wanted to
do to give something back.
This is Kancha
Sherpa and his wife.
He's the last surviving
member of the 1953 expedition,
and the Khata scarf, which
is put on over the head,
it's a Tibetan tradition.
It's sort of like
giving flowers,
and so you can see how
much they're adored
by their fellow villagers.
These images here, taken by
Aaron Huey for a "National
Geographic" assignment,
are pictures
of how they see themselves,
snapshots that they put up
on the wall, sort of the
prints of who they are,
and what they do,
and what it's like,
and that's a pretty cool
way to see those people.
Nice image here by Corey
Richards coming down
through the icefall.
Corey was over on
Everest this past year,
and he had an issue
with health in 2012,
but came back this
year and finished
his dream of getting up
there without the use
of supplemental oxygen, which
is kind of a challenging thing
to do.
We humans really aren't
meant to be at that altitude
without oxygen, and you
have probably four minutes
without oxygen before you
have irreparable brain damage.
So when you go at
a reduced amount
because you're at atmosphere,
it doesn't do great things
for your body.
Looking down to the
North Col-- pardon me--
from camp two looking
down from the South Col
into the Western Cym-- the
winds and the air up there.
And then a stitch
program here taken
with a smartphone looking
all the way around.
It's like a 360 panorama.
And I think about
what you can use.
I used an iPhone in 2012,
and took it to the summit,
took pictures with
it, came down,
and with the use
of a Thuraya sat
phone helped Emily
Harrington post an Instagram
selfie from the South Col.
It wasn't quite the summit,
but it was 800 meters lower
than the south summit.
So that was the
highest altitude that--
and the first time an Everest
selfie had been snapped up
there.
So we're just making
the world smaller.
So in 2012 we had our team.
It was a very busy year on the
mountain as most years are,
and our goal was to get
most of our climbers up.
I was the only one that had
previous Everest experience.
I was team leader.
I wanted to open it up to others
so they had the opportunity
to try it on their own
and see what it was like.
So they made it to the
summit on the 24th and 25th,
and I was out of gas kind
of figuratively speaking.
I was trying it without
supplemental oxygen,
and I spent two nights
at the South Col
just sort of slowly
just getting miserable.
And I was like, OK,
it's not going to go.
I'm going to go down.
So it's about 5:00
in the evening.
I'm like-- you do
what you always
do when you feel self-pity.
You eat potato chips,
so I ate potato chips.
Oh, I'm not going
to climb Everest.
I'm wiped out.
I'm worthless, and then all
of a sudden the weather went,
and it was really good.
And I knew that something
good was happening,
and so I just listened to
everyone crunch out of camp
at about 10 o'clock at night,
and then waited another three
hours at 1:00 in
the morning left,
and was behind
everyone going up.
And to claim that that route--
it wasn't a breath of wind.
It was incredibly calm.
It was warm.
I had thin gloves, and
it fulfilled this dream
I had had of being able to climb
it without supplemental oxygen
and to do it by fair means.
And so the third time lucky.
The two previous times I
had used oxygen sparingly,
but I was there
working, and I didn't
want to compromise what I
had set out to work with.
So this time I was-- the
team-- it was success.
They had gotten down,
and I went for it,
although my wife Jenny thought--
I didn't bring a radio,
so she didn't know what was up.
So I marched up there,
and had a good time,
and got up to the top, and
sat there, looked around.
It was kind of a-- when
you're there actually
it's not any fun.
You're suffering.
You're head is hurting
and things like that,
but when you get back that's
when you enjoy it afterwards,
and I think that's-- there's
no immediate fun to it.
There's the saying that three
types of fun-- it's easy,
and fun is right now.
Type two is it's
not fun, but it's
fun when you get done doing
it, and type three fun is
it's not fun when you're doing.
It's not fun afterwards.
So this kind of
fits in type two.
It's a lot of hard work,
but when you get done
it's not any good.
So a photograph that Kris
Erickson had snapped.
He climbed Lhotse, the next
peak over, the following day.
So he and Hillary O'Neil
had climbed both peaks
in a quick period of time--
and looking at the headlamps
as they moved up
onto the mountain.
The view from up there, the
shadow of Mount Everest that
you get to see when
you're out looking on it,
and so there's-- your
name again please?
AUDIENCE: Rob.
CONRAD ANKER: Rob,
and Rob summited
in 2012, the same
year we were there,
and on the 20th, and
stormy weather, I remember.
We probably crossed paths, but
we didn't have tea together,
but we had tea together
at lunch today.
So thank you, Rob, but our
team after we got done.
We were all happy, and
we were all probably
10 to 20 pounds lighter, which
is a good thing after working
with the Mayo Clinic
that when we go hungry
it helps our bodies out.
So they were concerned
that I was injuring myself,
but still here.
I'm OK.
So on to the earthquake
of 2014-- pardon
me, 2015, and this is from a
Dutch university, this image
here.
And we can see this
is in Langtang,
which is the area
that was closer
to the epicenter
of the earthquake.
And the upper one is 2014,
and the lower one is 2015,
and the red, because it's
infrared, is vegetation,
and then the white is snow.
And then you can see
where the green is,
and the village of Langtang
and Gumba, which were-- there
was large debris flow that came
down and buried the village
under many, many meters of
rock, and snow, and slurry,
and basically took the village
out and all 400 of the people.
Overall, 9000 people
perished in Nepal.
The houses that were
built traditionally
without any reinforcement,
either rebar or cement,
were the ones that took
the worst brunt of it.
They came across.
They fell down, fell apart.
A village in Thome
here-- it's collapsed,
and we have a young girl and
her grandmother living outside
and are being
optimistic about it.
Tending to the deceased
in a funeral pyre here.
One of the-- how
deeply affected it.
This is a view of the
village of Phortse,
Ama Dablam in the background,
and a very close connection
to this.
This is where the team-- Sherpa
that I worked with in '99
came from and where we started
the Khumbu Climbing Center
and where we run the
vocational training each year.
And they're a very
traditional village.
They've said no to large hotels,
and they still keep it small,
and they want to preserve their
culture, and history, in where
they are with it, but we
came with an idea as a way
to have some permanence for
the Khumbu Climbing Center
to build a physical building.
And that was working with
the Montana Tech University
School of Architecture
to design a building that
would be passive solar energy
efficient, earthquake safe,
and then be able to give
the climbing center,
the vocational program,
permanence, and a place
where they can base it out of
and where they can bring people
in there to do further things.
So working with the village,
looking at the various plans
that you can look at with
it, they chose with it.
And it's been an ongoing
project to build it.
Everything either comes
up on the back of a porter
or strapped to a yak, which
is interesting to see.
It gets carried up to
the red [INAUDIBLE].
These next few images
here are renderings
of what the building will
look like when it's finished,
and we spent-- my
wife Jenny and I
spent the month of April
working on the building
and kind of keeping along.
We have a group of masons,
and it's a challenging project
to get done, but
we're coming along.
We're having fun.
It's a neat thing,
but you always
bite off more than you can chew,
and you'll never go hungry.
So I think that's an axiom
that you can use for work, too.
But it's been a really
wonderful project, a way
to integrate with them to bring
building materials and building
techniques that are
new to their culture
and how they're doing it.
Thanks to the photographers,
and Nat Geo, my wife Jenny.
A photograph from afar,
and this is a photograph
of the recreation of
what we-- we climbed it
in period costume in 2007
for the wildest dream.
It was burly.
I was really, really cold.
Even though we had as close
to perfect re-creation,
a lot of the clothing that was
made by the same companies that
were there in 1924, it
was just frightfully cold.
And then in case you were
wondering if there really
is a yeti, I borrowed this
from Tintin goes to Tibet,
but there's the yeti
watching the yak train,
but I'm going to back
it up to this photograph
here and open it
up to the audience
if you do have a
question or you want to--
AUDIENCE: So in
terms of taking risk,
how do you find where
your limit actually is?
Because it seems to
me a lot of times
like maybe you
crossed your limit
to find where the limit
is, but in your profession,
that's a little dangerous.
CONRAD ANKER: Yeah,
great question about risk
and when you know.
Part of it is building blocks.
So you go upon
experience of experience,
and if I were to step in
any one of your jobs today,
it would be a train wreck.
I'd probably crash
your computer.
I'd lose all your data.
People that you work for would
come in like, what did you do?
So you build upon experience.
So all the climbing
that I've done
on a climb like Meru or
Everest is the previous decades
of experience
building upon that,
and then most of the time,
probably 98% of time,
you keep risk dialed down
below where it's acceptable.
And then a little
bit of time you have
to push out of that envelope.
When you're younger,
and you're male,
and your prefrontal cortex
isn't fully developed,
you live in that
risk zone way more
than you do when
you're climbing,
but making good decisions come
about based on experience.
And it's sort of you
know when it's not right
and it's not safe, and then
you can plan accordingly.
Hopefully that helps out.
AUDIENCE: My question is,
in terms of technology,
is there anything
new that you know
of that might help with safety
both ascending and descending
from the mountain?
CONRAD ANKER: Technology
and safety in the mountains.
I mean, crampons
are crampons, and I
mean, ice tools
and down clothing,
all that stuff-- it really
hasn't changed that much.
There's small,
incremental improvements
that make them better, but
probably the technology
that all of you work on in
terms of a the self driving
automobile-- that technology
that goes in there-- maybe you
can have a device that
is in the process-- using
a smartphone that would then
help guide you get down.
So having more information
available to you
would be better.
Having a drone that can
fly up high, a large one,
and pluck you off-- I
mean, yeah, we can do that.
I mean, humans-- we're pretty
darn good tool users and tool
builders, but you have to
ask yourself is that really
what you want.
I mean, you go up to the
mountains to get lost,
to find yourself, to
ask these questions,
because if it was easy,
you wouldn't go do it.
So the technology-- there's a
certain point where all of us
are like, I'm going
to turn the phone off.
I'm not going to look at it.
I'm going to go to bed.
I'm going to go to
sleep, and likewise I'm
going to go in the mountains.
I'm going to bring
a camera along,
but I don't want my camera to
talk to the rest of the world
or broadcast with the
rest of the world.
I want to take a few pictures
to come back and bring memories
back.
So I'm sure there will be
something wild and innovative
that comes out that will
help people out there,
but the less you have the
more you rely on yourself
and your partners, the more
meaningful that experience is.
And hopefully one of
the takeaways from today
is go out and find adventure.
AUDIENCE: So being
here at Google
and also climbing part of
my life, and at this point,
climbing for me is more like
a lifestyle than a hobby--
how do you strike a balance?
You want to be
successful at your work.
You want to make the difference.
You want to make an
impact, and you're
talking about all this great
stuff that we do at Google,
but at the same time,
you really want to climb.
So at this point, in my case--
and I'm sure a lot of people
can relate to
this-- I can advance
in climbing only if
a climb more time.
I can spend more time,
but at the same time,
this time can be used for work.
So how do you find this balance?
CONRAD ANKER: I can't-- that's--
if I were to answer that,
I would be like, maybe this is
a conversation you have to have
with yourself,
maybe your parents,
maybe a person that you trust.
I mean, if you really
want to climb, you could
probably-- you could
walk to your supervisor,
and hand in your notice, and
say I'm going to camp four.
I got my sprinter van, and
I've got a rope, and a rack,
and the pack on my back,
and I'm going to climbing.
And then you'd go
climbing all the time,
but being able to
work here and being
able to spend time in
the mountains-- I mean,
you're fortunate.
I mean, if you lived
in Houston, climbing
would be once or twice a year.
I mean, here you
can time it right.
You can train at
the climbing gym,
and you can get up into
the Sierra high country.
You can get to Yosemite.
You can have a lot of great
opportunities with that.
So yeah, finding that
balance where you're happy.
So I just had to go climbing.
I didn't have any choice, and
I wasn't a scientist in the way
that all of you were
coders and geniuses here,
and Google wasn't around
when I was a young man.
AUDIENCE: I watched the
documentary for Meru
a few months ago,
and at the end of it,
I was absolutely astonished.
And you kind of mentioned
a little bit of the things
that you go through in
the documentary for Meru
here that it's type two fun,
that it's not really enjoyable.
What are some of the
conversations and some
of the mental strategies you use
when it just completely sucks?
CONRAD ANKER: Well, one thing I
always keep in the back of my--
it's like a little
pocket that you can have
in there when things are bad.
So I think about
Shackleton, and he
survived 17 months out
there with nothing,
and living on the pack ice,
and living off of seaweed,
and penguins, and seals,
and undue hardship,
and he still came through,
and the other stories
of endurance and suffering.
Humans are incredibly
strong, and we
don't realize our true
potential until we're put
into the situation where it is.
One of the things I
always keep in mind
is that it's not that bad,
and that it could be worse,
and that you hold fast, and you
don't freak out, and just be
like, OK, this is where I'm at.
This is what I'm doing, and for
myself I sort of self-selected
for climbing.
I enjoyed doing
it, and the way I
process information-- I'm
hyper situationally aware.
So the closing of the
door just registered,
and people moving in here.
Someone's out there
walking on the lawn.
All that stuff is
asking for attention.
In second grade, it was
a total train wreck.
Ms. Shaver was
calling up my parents.
What are we going
to do with him?
He won't sit down.
He can't focus.
What are we going
to do with him?
But when I go climbing, then
I'm in a risky situation.
So all that input--
I process it,
and I have to make
decisions on how to climb.
And it's not the right thing.
I'm going out, and
I'm having fun,
but it is part of
how I process things.
AUDIENCE: I'm wondering if
you have any advice on how
to mitigate risk when
you're at a high altitude
and you're at a kind of
a diminished capacity
for reasoning.
CONRAD ANKER: OK.
Yeah, when you're at
altitude your body
is shunting oxygen away from
your extremities to your core
and to your brain, and
we have our organic CPUs,
central processing units,
are very energy intensive.
Look into some of
the information
about human evolution, and
why we have such large brains,
and what part of
the brain we use.
And so when you get to altitude
and you have a lack of oxygen,
then making decisions
becomes really difficult,
and the people that are at
altitude with a compromised
oxygen input, which is
everyone-- the people that
do well are the ones who have
been climbing the longest time.
So it's innate
what they're doing,
and they have balance
on their feet.
They know how to work with it.
They know symptoms that
are coming in there,
where someone that
is new to climbing
might-- they're in
over their head,
and then they're not
processing in the best way.
So they might get frostbite.
Things might change.
AUDIENCE: So what do you
think the next big improvement
will come from?
Sounds like it's not
gear like your answer
from the previous question.
Is it the way we train?
Is it just the way we think
about-- fast and light
was a big thing
recently, or is it
the technique and the
strides that the sport
climbers and mixed climbers
are making in the past?
CONRAD ANKER: That's great.
Probably one of the greatest
improvements in climbing
has been the climbing
gym, and now we're
having second
generation children
that are growing up in it.
The strongest climbers
come from the gym.
Alex Honnold was a
competition climber.
So he began climbing at
a gym, and so learning
that muscle memory at a younger
age, getting stronger with it,
is really a key part of
that, and training more.
And when you do a rock climb,
it's always a constant.
It's this handhold is that size,
and so the next person that
tries that it's the same thing.
And so you might
have improvements
in the climbing shoe rubber.
It's stickier, but as
people get stronger,
they're within it, but probably
not so much what I would
see as improvements, but more
people enjoying it, and being
outdoors, and being
with other people,
and that teamwork is being part
of their self actualisation--
that we become better
humans because when
we interact with people
climbing you and I are a team,
and I trust.
You trust me, and we achieve
the goal by working together.
If we play tennis,
I want to beat you,
and you want to beat me.
And we're playing mental
games, and we're training,
and then I get a hop over the
net, or you hop over the net,
and you shake the hand.
I much prefer having summited a
peak, and sitting in the tent,
and just having a mug of
tea, and the wind is blowing,
and you're like, we did it.
I mean, that's
good human emotion.
I went down a rabbit
warren on that.
Go ahead, Rob.
AUDIENCE: So at this point,
a lot of the easy, obvious
objectives have already been
accomplished in mountaineering,
and sponsors don't
really want to pay
you to go do the same thing over
and over that someone else has
already done 100 times.
Do you think that the only
way to attract sponsors
is to take additional risk,
or is the state of the art
advancing fast enough that
people can find new projects
at the same risk threshold?
CONRAD ANKER: Great
question about risk,
but yeah, a lot of
the obvious mountains
have been climbed,
the 8000 meter peaks.
So there's new routes
and faces of them.
I mean, it's a finite resource.
I mean, everyone says, oh, there
are thousands of mountains,
but there's not.
I mean, there will come
a time in the future
where all the mountains
have been climbed.
So I think from a
sponsorship standpoint,
like in parapenting, and base
jumping, and extreme skiing,
it's how can you ramp up
that adrenaline factor.
And they're doing crazier stuff,
and skiing faster, and shooting
through narrower things.
And in climbing it's
climbing without a rope
and doing something
faster with that,
but there's also
something that would
be-- and a great way
for a sponsor that's
looking in climbing in the way
that you can share knowledge
and information, and that
you get more people engaged
in the natural world.
You get them to care about the
cryosphere, the atmosphere,
the oceans, all these
different things
through the natural
world, and that
would be from a
sponsorship standpoint
something that would benefit.
So it's not being the best.
I mean, we sponsor
basketball games
because someone wins a game,
and in between shooting hoops
they sell us a beer
and arm deodorant.
So I'm in the
sponsorship work, too,
but try to get people to think
about science and to-- I mean,
everyone in this room is
really healthy and fit,
but as a nation,
we're struggling.
The top five ways
that people die early
are accidents, which
is fate, but cancer,
which is, again, sort of the
luck of the draw, but diabetes,
stroke, pulmonary, and cardio.
All four of those are directly
connected to lifestyle choices.
So if you don't exercise and you
eat fatty, salty, sugary food
and then you're going to be--
so if we can encourage people
to be healthier and
to come back to what
that previous
connection-- question
the connection that
people have about building
good dialogue between humans--
then you've done a good thing.
AUDIENCE: What
have you personally
seen as far as the efforts to
clean up or at least reduce
the impact that all the
different expeditions have had
on the mountain as far as the
trash and waste left behind,
especially as
climbing Everest has
become more and more commercial
and more and more popular?
Are they finding ways where
they're requiring expeditions
now to pack out more
than they packed in
to try to start
reducing all that's
been left on the mountain
over the decades?
CONRAD ANKER: Yeah,
great question.
In the 90s, there were a
lot of cleanup expeditions
that went out to clean up
the waste that was left.
In earlier exhibitions,
it was like,
oh, no one's going
to come after me,
or I'll just throw
it in a crevasse.
It's not a big deal.
The standard routes
on-- the trade
routes on the north
and the south sides--
there's a lot of
human impact, and it's
a very inhospitable
and very harsh climate,
but at the same time, it's
a very delicate and fragile
environment.
So it's kind of
this-- there's more
resiliency in the
rainforest in the jungle.
I mean, there is
more life there.
There's more turnover in
terms of biodiversity.
Not much is going on up there
so litter hangs out there
for a long time.
Then Nepali government
realizes that a clean mountain
is a safer mountain.
It's also a more
attractive mountain,
and a more attractive mountain
is financially a better place
to be.
So this year they
had every exhibition
is required to bring their
waste back from the mountain,
and in addition to that, eight
kilos of just generic waste
that was up there.
And so that was part of it,
and you have to put a bond up
that you bring out
all your garbage,
and then they put on this
extra 16 pounds, eight kilos,
that you would
have to bring out.
So they're making
good efforts at it.
Most of the garbage,
human waste excepted,
that you see on Everest is
an aesthetic consideration.
An old oxygen cylinder
just looks like trash.
It doesn't look good.
They're getting hauled down
because they're souvenirs.
There's a market for them.
You can sell an old
oxygen cylinder for $40,
and that's four or five
days wages for someone.
And so there is an
incentive along those lines,
but probably the greatest impact
that climbers have on Everest
is the several
thousand pounds of CO2
that goes into the atmosphere
as a result of using
jet travel to get over there.
So that's cumulative,
and that adds to it.
AUDIENCE: Besides
Everest, what sticks out
in your climbing
life as that summit
that you can't get
out of your mind?
CONRAD ANKER:
Well, the Meru one,
that was 25 years of obsessing,
and three expeditions
over eight years, and
spending 45 nights
on the side of the mountain just
trying to-- not letting it go.
So that was a really
beautiful point of it,
but yeah, I'll still continue
to enjoy being outdoors
and the level of intensity
is it'll be this nice hill
up here-- if I'm 90 or 100
and I can climb that nice hill
and listen to birds, that'll
be as meaningful as climbing
Meru when I was 49.
So just adjust what
your goal is, but yeah,
I have a trip
planned in November
to Nepal with David
Lama, Austrian climber,
and to try a [INAUDIBLE]
peak in Nepal.
We tried it last year.
We got denied, so we're going
to go back, suffer some more.
AUDIENCE: Hey, I'd love to
hear more about why you were
convinced that-- what was it?
And now I'm forgetting his name.
Edmund Hillary--
no, George Mallory
didn't make it to the
summit, and is there
any big debate still?
Are people still arguing
if he did or didn't?
CONRAD ANKER: Oh, good question.
Most people accept it
was incredible what
they did in 1924 they
got to where they did.
A few people still believe
that, and every now and then
we have internet discussions
of whether or not
they could have
made it to the top,
but my view is based on the
location of George Mallory's
body, where they found
Sandy Irvine's ice
axe in 1933 above
the yellow band,
where they were last seen
by Noell Odell, and then
the difficulty of the
first and second steps.
And when we were there in
2007, we pulled the ladder
and free climbed, and it's 5,
10 climbing it 8,700 meters.
I mean, you're right below
the summit, and to do
that without protection--
I mean we had a number four
Camalot with a wood
stack and a nylon rope,
and it was hard climbing.
And to see they're up
there with hobnail boots,
a hemp rope, no protection.
The rope was kind of like a
safety line as they walked
along to keep you from
toppling off the mountain,
but it wasn't-- and the systems
that we use now with belaying
and protection on it, and the
fact that there was no evidence
of a rappel station built on
top of the second step when they
came down.
So there wasn't-- 1960 was
the first Chinese descent from
the north side and
then again in 1975,
and there would have
been something up there,
but to solo the second
step and then down solo it
in the condition they were in,
and then to slip where they
were on that, I just--
doesn't seem plausible,
but a tremendous amount of
respect for what they did,
and who they were, and they are.
Every generation owes it
to the previous generations
for what they are
able to do, and it's
that ball of knowledge
that we, and add to it,
and we pass it on to the next
generation, and that's why.
MONICA POLETTI: Thank
you so much for coming.
This is really cool insight.
[APPLAUSE]
