SPEAKER: Among the great values
of the discussion we've just
heard is the way, especially in
the last ten minutes, it was
exploring how the tools of
digital interactivity which, of
course, at their heart are
binary yes or no, one or zero,
are revealing the complexities
of human nature, of social
organization, of political
ideas, everything
else we do in life.
With this same theme that the
world is complex, people are
complex, and the complexity is
being revealed all the more
clearly by these digital tools
we work on, we have the next
presentation, which will be the
last one before our lunch time.
So far in our speeches and our
panels we've been talking about
two things fundamentally.
One Is about people working
together in groups, their
connecting, their
collaborating.
Second, we've been talking
about the digital tools
which make this kind
of collaboration, the
connection, possible.
We've heard about all the
richnesses, some of the
occasional perils that this new
paradigm for operation holds.
As a reminder of the complexity
of life, we're now going to
consider to be other side of
that, of what is like for
people to work fundamentally on
their own, to work
fundamentally in a non-virtual
way, a quite tangible
and practical way.
This is partly the world
of Thoreau we might
be re-entering.
Not quite the world of Pascal
who told us that all of
mankind's miseries derive from
the inability to sit quietly in
one room by oneself, because
we're not going to hear about
sitting quietly in the room.
But we are going to hear about
the non-virtual life, the
largely individual life and how
we should take its findings and
compliment what we've been
hearing in the rest of
the presentations.
To do this we have an
extraordinary conversation
between two gifted speakers.
One of them, Tom Brokaw, is
known to and respected by
probably hundreds of millions
people around the world, of
viewers for his work as a
reporter and for more than two
decades an anchor at NBC news.
I've known him myself for a
long time starting when I
was a viewer in Los Angeles
when I was growing up.
I most recently saw him early
last year when two of us were
having lunch with another
of mutual friend.
This friend was trying to
decide whether or not he
would get into politics.
This friend with Jim Webb who
was deciding then whether or
not he should run for the
Senate in Virginia, and
of course, he did.
And his campaign was greatly
affected by an internet tool,
YouTube, through Macaca.
Among Tom Brokaw's
accomplishments is that of
being an outdoorsman, too.
And in that connection he will
speak with one of his friends,
the great outdoorsman and
businessman Yvon Chouinard.
He is the founder of Patagonia,
which arose from his expertise
in the non-virtual world of
rock climbing equipment, he has
put his commitment to the real
world into action as leader of
the worldwide movement to
devote 1% for the planet.
To discuss living the
non-virtual life, please join
me in welcoming Tom Brokaw
and Yvon Chouinard.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
TOM BROKAW: I'm very
pleased to be here.
I was so relieved this morning
when I was partaking of the
great spread out here at
the Google breakfast.
I was trying to decide whether
get an extra strip of bacon and
then I remembered last night's
news about the market cap at
Google and I decided, what the
hell, I'm going to go for
the extra strip of bacon.
I've been trying to think of a
frame of reference to introduce
to this crowd my friend Yvon
Chouinard, and this is
what I've settled on.
I want you to all to think of
yourselves as members of a
graduate course in the digital
revolution or in computer
sciences at Stanford.
You're in the middle of
a heated discussion.
And through the door bursts a
blacksmith in a leather apron.
Sweaty and grimy,
pumping on the bellows.
The forge is white hot, he's
got a piece of molten steel in
his tongs, and he says to all
of you, just a damn minute.
My friend Yvon began
life as a climber.
That led to him becoming a
blacksmith so that he could
improve the tools of rock
climbing first, and
then ice climbing.
He is I say without fear of
reputation, one of the most
successful people that I know
in every sense of the word,
personally and professionally.
He's had of life of contentment
pursuing his passions.
He's an accomplished, not only
rock and ice climber, but
kayaker, fly fisherman, and
surfer In his personal life,
he's married to Melinda, who's
here today, as well, who's
his business partner.
And they have built one of the
most enviable businesses in the
world, frankly, in Patagonia.
We've known each other for more
than 30 years now, and he's
been a hugely important
influence in my life.
Even when he's not around, I
feel his tug on my shirt sleeve
saying, let's get the hell out
of here and go do something.
And we have done that.
We've done it on the
Trans-Tibetan Plateau in the
Russian Far East, north
of the Arctic Circle.
In Patagonia and most
of the mountaintops
of the American West.
Just 10 days ago we were
together in British Columbia
fishing and one of his friends
brought over a DVD that he
wanted to show me about what
was happening to the head
waters in [? D.C. ?]
and I put it on my laptop
and momentarily I had
problems syncing it up.
And Yvon was standing there
watching and he walked
away from me saying,
I'm the problem.
I know if I get too close to
these things they don't work.
So it's there a what
I want to begin.
Have you ever put your
fingers on a keyboard?
YVON CHOUINARD:
Absolutely not, no.
TOM BROKAW: Never have?
YVON CHOUINARD: Never.
TOM BROKAW: You ever
owned a Blackberry?
YVON CHOUINARD: I don't
even know what they are.
TOM BROKAW: You
have a cell phone?
YVON CHOUINARD: I don't have a
cellphone, but you know, I'm
the most un-wired person in the
world probably, a personal
choice, but my friend
Tom [? McGoyan ?]
says, behind every
Luddite there's a
woman with a computer.
TOM BROKAW: It's true.
Melinda is out there and we
were able to communicate back
when we wanted to find out what
was going on in the company in
online sales, that she
was able to do it.
By the way, he's known
to his friends as Y.C.,
or The Tiny Terror.
And you'll understand that
phrase as we go through
the course of our
discussion here today.
Patagonia, Yvon,
has gone online.
And it's a big part of your
success now and a big part
of your business plan.
YVON CHOUINARD: Yeah, my
company's completely wired
even though I'm not.
Starting from the very first
IBM computers, I remember years
ago we had to switch from a
System/32 to the next computer.
And we bought it and put it in,
and several months later I
figured, I better go see this
thing, see what it looks like.
We called it Roscoe.
I went into the this room, this
air conditioned room where the
computer was and I was
looking at this thing.
I said, Jesus, I spent
a quarter of a million
dollars on that thing?
He said no, Roscoe's
over there.
You're looking at the
air conditioner.
[LAUGHTER]
My company's completely
wired, but that's because
every company is.
But that doesn't make it right.
It's kind of like, everybody
drives SUVs because they're
afraid not to drive SUVs,
because they're afraid of
getting hit by an SUV.
You know, I asked my assistant
for a telephone number, and it
takes him three times longer to
find it on his computer then
if you had a little Rolodex.
So, you know, it's not the
answer for everything.
And it's certainly in my
own personal life, it's
not the answer for me.
TOM BROKAW: OK, we'll talk
about that in a moment, but in
terms of the business, you're
doing more online
direct sales now.
And I know how you feel about
the consumption of energy.
That saves energy because
people are not getting in their
automobiles and driving to one
of your stores, of which you
have a large network around
the country, as well.
Isn't that an advantage
of technology?
YVON CHOUINARD: Well,
not necessarily.
When you look at the damage
that your product is doing,
transportation is one
of the big things.
We manufacture something in
Thailand where the fabric comes
from Japan by ship to Thailand.
And then Thailand, it goes to
Oakland, and then it goes by
truck to Oakland to Reno.
Well, shipping by ship
doesn't cause much damage.
It probably causes more
damage shipping by truck
from Oakland to Reno.
Or, second-day air to a
mail order customer is
super, super wasteful.
It's like 10 times more
energy use that overland.
If you're trying to lead an
examined life, you have to
really ask a lot of very
deep questions, and keep
asking those questions.
Because there's often
unintended consequences to
any of this technology.
TOM BROKAW: Let me ask
you about the next
generation coming up.
One of the strong feelings I
have, and you and I parts
sllghtly on all of this;
I'm not promiscuous about
technology, but I see the
advantages of it and I'm
excited by the uses of it.
But at the same time, I say to
young people when I go and talk
to them at colleges and at high
school levels or in junior
higher levels, that you
can wire the world and
short-circuit your soul.
And by that I mean, you can't
solve the fundamental problems
of poverty, for example, by
hitting the delete button, or
hitting backspace to go back to
a time in which you're
more comfortable.
Do you worry about generations
coming along who don't put
their boots on the ground, or
get their hands in the dirt, or
spend their nights in scary
places and find their way
by their own reckoning as
opposed to a GPS system.
YVON CHOUINARD:
Yeah, absolutely.
I read an article about the
most successful CEOs in
America, I mean the ones that
really get the job done, not
the not the celebrity CEOs.
And in every case, they have
a background of working on
their cars, or something.
I mean, these are some of
the older guys when you
could work on your car.
Or they or they have a wood
shop and they make things,
they work with their hands.
When there's a faucet
leak, they fix it.
They don't call the plumber.
It gives you a certain sense of
confidence that you can affect
the world, that you
can make change.
I think the major roll of
a CEO in a company is to
affect change, it's not
to keep the status quo.
But that takes confidence to
take risk and say, OK we've
been doing it this way for a
long time, now let's
do it this way.
I think that's missing in a lot
of people because they're
living in a virtual reality
world where they're not
getting their hands dirty.
The thing that's missing
in most people's
lives now is time.
You know, there's probably
a lot of fly fisherman
in this room.
I would guess that 9 out of 10
of you only fly fish with a
guide because you don't have
time to really learn how
to do it on your own.
You're trying to
side-step that process.
You get the plastic surgeons
and CEOs that want to
climb Mount Everest.
These high powered people, they
hire a guide, they spend
$85,000, all the ladders are in
place, there's 5,000
feet of fixed ropes.
You don't have to carry a pack,
all the camps are set up.
There's a Sherpa in the front
with three feet of rope,
basically pulling.
There's one of the back,
pushing, carrying
extra oxygen bottles.
You haven't climbed Everest.
The purpose of climbing
something like that is
to affect some kind of
spiritual or physical gain.
If you compromise the process,
you're an asshole when you
start out and you're an
asshole when you get back.
[LAUGHTER]
TOM BROKAW: I told you we'd
to the tiny terror part and
in more than short order.
What do you think about cell
phones and satphones on
mountains and expeditions?
YVON CHOUINARD: Well, it takes
all the adventure away.
If you get into trouble you
just make a little call
and you're out of there.
TOM BROKAW: How
about a compass?
Would you go for compass?
I mean, I've been
with you there and--
YVON CHOUINARD: Yeah, I've
used a compass before.
TOM BROKAW: Not very often.
YVON CHOUINARD: You have
to have a map, too,
to go along with it.
TOM BROKAW: When you go into
nature, when we've been
together in Patagonia, or
when we've been up in the
Trans-Tibetan Plateau or even
in a wild river in Newfoundland
away from a town, what does it
do for you emotionally?
Can you describe this audiences
that gets the same kind of
thrill out of new [? apps ?]
in technology about what going
into a new place does for
you where it's quite primal.
YVON CHOUINARD: I've lived a
life pretty close to nature all
my life and I'm kind of a Zen
Buddhist in that I believe
that we're part of nature.
We're not separate from it.
I don't believe the world
is flat or should be flat.
I celebrate all the different
indigenous cultures around the
world, and it's really sad to
me to see that we're losing
one language a day.
I believe in diversity.
I think nature loves diversity.
It doesn't like
homogeneous society.
It doesn't like mono culture,
it doesn't like mono crops.
My idea of sustainability is:
I have a friend, a Japanese
friend whose father
is a wooder.
He lives on a northern
part of Japan.
He goes out on the rocks on a
daily basis and fishes, catches
more fish that he can eat.
He trades them for
neighbors for rice,
salt, some few things.
He has a garden.
He lives on two hundred dollars
a month, and that's as
sustainable as I can think of.
TOM BROKAW: But you can't
extrapolate that to the world
population that we have.
YVON CHOUINARD: No, but I try
to live my life going towards
simplicity, rather than
trying to make it
increasingly complex.
That's why I don't
have a cell phone.
That's why when I'm away from
the office I don't call in.
By not calling in, it tells my
employees that I trust them.
I don't need feel like a big
shot, that everything is going
to fall apart if I don't
call in every day.
And it changes the whole way my
business operates because I
trust my employees, that I feel
like they can handle things.
They do it.
TOM BROKAW: To get back to
the technology for a moment
and your interest in the
preservation of nature.
If you take, for example, just
biodiversity, one of the great
champions of biodiversity in
the world today is Gordon
Moore, who was one of
the founders of Intel.
As you know he's a great
benefactor of Conservation
International, an organization
that I know that you're very
familiar with, that Meredith,
my wife, is vice-chairman, with
Tom Friedman's wife
is also involved.
Technology allows them to
rapidly share information about
what's going on in hot spots.
To not only share information,
but to store data and to get
solutions going from scientists
who are able to access what
we've been able to do it.
That's a good use
of technology.
YVON CHOUINARD:
Yeah it really is.
I'm just speaking from
my own personal life.
I think we're not going to
solve a lot of world's
problems with technology.
There's an unintended
consequence for a lot of this.
TOM BROKAW: Is there enough
dialogue about that?
YVON CHOUINARD: I
think no there isn't.
But I think David [? Brower ?]
said that, a lot of the world's
problems could be solved if we
just turned around and
took a forward step.
I mean I like to drink wine.
I'm so over California wine.
You can't tell the difference
between two-buck Chuck and
a lot of $15, $20 wines.
They're all the same, there's
no outstanding wines. they're
all made in stainless steel
vats, you know, super-filtered.
There's no chance of taking
a risk that you're going to
get a bad bottle of wine.
Compare that to the old style
of making wine where it's in
wooden cask and you get great,
great wine with a five
minute long, lasting finish.
Yeah, we're making a level
world but, look at: the
cancer rate in Australia.
is off the chart.
Skin cancer.
Because of the hole in the
ozone, but you know what?
It's because there's a bunch
of red-haired, white-skin
Irish living in Australia.
And who should be living there,
but people with jet-black skin?
And as we all become
homogeneous and we all have the
same genes, we're going through
the sixth grade extinction of
animals around the world.
And plants and birds.
70% percent of the large
mammals in a world are in
danger of extinction.
We are a large mammal.
The closer we are together, the
more similar we are together,
the more chances are that
we're going to go with it.
There could be a bird flu that
going to affect everyone of us,
except maybe a few isolated,
indigenous cultures that have
state stayed and kept
there complexities, and
kept their culture.
TOM BROKAW: Should there be
more application of this
technology to address that?
YVON CHOUINARD: You know,
I don't know about that.
TOM BROKAW: Do you think that's
a use that is under-realized?
That too much of it is about
personal information, personal
communication, and commerce?
YVON CHOUINARD: Yeah, it is.
We're no longer citizens of
the world, we're consumers.
if you look at the word,
consume, in Webster's, it
means to use up, destroy.
We have a situation where we
have declining resources
like this: [GESTURES].
And we have consumption going
like this: [GESTURES].
Well, you know what?
That can't go on forever.
Whenever I get confronted with
a question like you there, Tom,
I say, OK what's
the simple way?
What's a simple
solution to this?
In my own company, I've always
felt that a product is
perfected, not when you can't
add anything more to it, but
when you can't take
anything away.
So you know for wine, my
new mantra is to eat
locally, drink globally.
[LAUGHTER]
I want to drink some
really interesting
wines made any old way.
And superb wines.
I mean, think about quality:
the best restaurants in a world
are these three-star Michelin
restaurants in Europe.
Imagine if you want to create
the best restaurant in the
world and you spend years in
getting that first
Michelin star.
And then you work your butt off
and you get your second star,
and then after many, many years
you get your third star and
you're one of the 20 best
restaurants in the world.
And then you say,
OK, I've done it.
Let's put in 500 tables.
Or 50 tables.
There are no three-star
restaurants with 50 tables.
If you really want excellence,
it has to be small.
TOM BROKAW: We've
lost proportion.
YVON CHOUINARD: Oh, absolutely.
Our values are bigger
is better, instead of
small is beautiful.
TOM BROKAW: Let me be a
shameless author a moment.
I have a book coming
out called Boom!
Voices From the Sixties and
Lessons for Today, and Yvon
and his great friend Doug
Tompkins [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
Doug Tompkins as many of you
know, I assume many of you
know, founded North
Face and ESPRIT.
And as a deep ecologist he
has bought great tracts
of land in South America.
Yvon is involved with
Melinda, as well, in that.
And we were there a couple of
years ago and there was a
Wharton School of graduate
students in business
who were on an Outward
Bound-like experience.
They came up to hear from Yvon
and Doug Tompkins, wildly
successful businessmen.
And the lesson that Yvon and
Doug wanted to impart to them
was that there are many more
values than just
the bottom line.
I want to just share, if I can,
as I do in the book, some
of the things that
you talked about.
One of the things that you said
to them: every time in your
company you were told you were
doing the wrong thing, it
turned out to be
the right thing.
What was an example of that was
fundamental to your company
that had nothing to
do with technology?
YVON CHOUINARD: Well I think at
one time we make this Capilene
underwear, this synthetic
underwear, and we were
competing with a lot of other
companies there was
making underwear.
Our marketing people wanted to
put it in big boxes, and a lot
of stuff that ends up in the
trash, to sell that underwear.
Because our competitors, there
was one, Hot Chilly's, that
was putting it in a can.
Looked like a tomato
soup can or something.
And I said, get rid
of that packaging.
And they said, no, be prepared
to take a 30% cut in revenue if
you get rid of that packaging.
I said, no, get rid of it.
It forced us to sew our
underwear better so that it
didn't look like underwear.
In fact, Chris [? McDevitt ?]
the other day was accepting an
award in Washington DC, and she
was wearing this black Capilene
underwear and everybody
thought it was a silk shirt.
So it forced our dealers to put
it out instead of in a box.
Our underwear sales
went up 40%.
TOM BROKAW: Just
with a rubber band.
YVON CHOUINARD: Yeah, we just
put a rubber band around it.
TOM BROKAW: This is part of the
theme of this conference,
obviously, is collaboration.
We're going to acknowledge
our hosts here and touch
on that little bit.
There is the reverse
collaboration that is going on
as a result of your business
practices and on the book that
you wrote about your business
called Let My People Go
Surfing, in that you've had
unlikely visitors, in my
judgment, from Walmart.
They've come to
Patagonia to learn.
What have they come to learn?
YVON CHOUINARD: There is
a revolution going on in
America with business
and the environment.
There's a lot of very concerned
people out there owning
businesses that really want
to do the right thing.
They need to know that
it's going to turn
out to be profitable.
And so they're calling us
because we've been there.
We've been doing this
for a long time.
So they're calling, they want
to come visit to see whether
we're real or is it
green marketing?
Walmart sent seven of their top
executives to comes visit us.
They want to do something.
My question to them is, how
far do you want to take it?
Do you want to just
green your facilities?
Have it lead building or
do you want to influence
your suppliers?
Want to take it all the
way it your suppliers?
Do you want to go to Coke and
Pepsi and say, hey, we're not
going to carry your product
anymore until you get rid of
high fructose corn syrup.
Because that's causing diabetes
in America and obesity.
You want to do that?
Because you could do it you.
If you did that to Coke
and Pepsi they would
have to change.
like You could change
the world if you want.
How far you want to go?
So that's what I
tell everybody.
That comes to, you know,
lead an examined life.
I think most of the damage
caused to the environment is
caused unintentionally by not
questioning what you're doing.
Once you educate
yourself, then act.
I mean, all my friends have
seen Inconvenient Truth.
They've seen Tom's program
on global warming.
I don't know any of them have
changed their light bulbs.
What was it, entertainment?
TOM BROKAW: Well,
it's a big issue.
We were talking with Vice
President Gore about that
out here beforehand.
My own guess is that it's going
to be the younger people, I
mean by that, really younger
people who are coming up and
who are going to put the
pressures upward other parents.
Tell this group about
1% to save the planet.
1% of your sales at Patagonia
go for environment
causes, but not just any
environmental causes.
YVON CHOUINARD: I'm a
manufacturer and there's
no such thing as making
anything without anything
that's sustainable.
We're polluters.
You can't manufacture any
product without ending up
with more waste than
you end up with.
We try to minimize the
damage that we do in
making the product.
We try not to make products
that are inherently
damaging in themselves.
But in the end we take one
percent of our sales and we
give it away to environmental
causes, particularly activists.
Environmental activists.
Because I feel that most of the
gains we're making as a
society, and just look in the
paper any day: you'll see that
government is not doing
anything, corporations
are not doing anything.
The big gains we're making are
done through civil democracy.
If you look at Civil Rights,
Women's Suffrage, creating
national parks, it was all
done through civil democracy.
It wasn't Johnson that enacted
civil rights legislation.
It was forced by Rosa Parks, a
black woman who was just tired
didn't want to get off the bus.
That's what's happening in
America and I don't have
the courage to be on
those frontlines.
I don't have the courage to
stand in front of those
bulldozers, so I dig into
my pocket and I support
those people that do.
We started an organization
called 1% For The Planet that
now has 750 companies that
each gives 1% of their sales
to environmental causes.
And they make out the
checks themselves to the
organizations that they want.
And we're signing up over
one company a day now.
TOM BROKAW: Are you
concerned about the--
[APPLAUSE]
And for those of you who have
companies in this audience, we
have application forms out here
during the luncheon break.
To talk about environment for a
moment: are you concerned that
there are too many competing
environmental organizations,
especially on a large
scale at the top?
And they're all chasing the
same buck and they're not
collaborating enough?
YVON CHOUINARD: Yeah, you know,
the pie is getting smaller, and
in fact, as far as philanthropy
goes, very, very little of it
goes to environmental causes.
Almost all of it goes to the
churches and it's drying up.
People are getting
greedier, I think.
I just saw an article in the
LA Times a few months ago,
talked about the great
philanthropists of America.
The one to get away tens of
millions of dollars a year.
Not one of them gives 1%
of their annual income
to philanthropy.
Not one.
Think, oh, you know, Bill
Gates makes $8 million a day.
Whatever he gives
is chump change.
So think about that.
TOM BROKAW: We're sitting
in the headquarters of
a company that is doing
a better of than that.
YVON CHOUINARD:
Well that's good.
TOM BROKAW: We know where to
send the applications, right?
When you have meetings with
your management, and a lot of
them are younger than the
two of us, obviously.
I know from my own personal
experience that they share
your ethos in terms of what
they're passionate about.
When you called the Patagonia
switchboard, the operator
is likely to say, hey
dude, the serf is up.
When are you getting out here?
But do you have real conflict
with them about the future of
Patagonia, and technology, and
the uses of technology for
marketing and retailing?
YVON CHOUINARD: No, I don't put
my own values, as far as being
wired, onto the people
that work for me.
I mean, you have to compete
and you have to compete
with the latest technology.
TOM BROKAW: What about other
conflicts outside the area of
technology in terms
of materials?
YVON CHOUINARD: Well, yeah.
Let me give you an example.
This technical underwear is a
big part of our business and
we were getting a lot of
competition from Under Armour
and all these other companies
doing virtually the same thing.
And they were putting silver
into the product to kill
bacteria so that your underwear
didn't smell as much when
you're on an expedition for 70
days and you don't get to
change your underwear.
Well, we refused to but
silver in it because it's
a toxic, heavy metal.
So our underwear sales are
really starting to [GESTURES]
go down.
But you know, if you
do the right thing
it always works out.
This japanese guy that works
for me in our fabric lab,
his father, who lives in
Japan, is a scientist.
Came up with a, he takes crab
shells, crushes them, and makes
a formula, and we dip our
underwear in that, and it
lasts you 50 washings and it
completely eliminates odor.
Completely natural.
TOM BROKAW: And your underwear
goes very nice of a
cold beer, then, too.
[LAUGHTER]
YVON CHOUINARD: Well, you know,
when you're wearing your
underwear for 60, 70 days,
it's time to change.
[LAUGHTER]
So then you say, OK, george.
You change with Phil.
Phil, --
[LAUGHTER]
TOM BROKAW: I guess the one
long-running disagreements that
we've had in all the years that
we've been great friends, is
whether the glass is half
empty or half full about
the future of this country.
And you have two kids,
Fletcher and Claire.
Fletcher is shaping surfboards
and involved the company and
Claire is a design
genius, as well.
Do you think they'll
have the lives that you
and Melinda have had.
YVON CHOUINARD: Yeah
I think they will.
Although, I'm not very
optimistic about the future.
I mean, this dichotomy between
increasing consumerism-- You
know, we could have a world
event tomorrow where the
entire world economy crashes.
Completely crashes.
I mean, the 9/11 thing was
a little, tiny incident
of what could happen.
And then what?
You've got a world where,
basically, there's no
more environmentalists
because it's survival.
It's kind of like national
parks in Africa where people
are shooting and eating
endangered species because
they've to feed their family.
And it could be a whirl like
that. it could start tomorrow.
So I'm glad I'm getting near
the end of mine, because I'm
not too optimistic
about the future.
TOM BROKAW: I close with
one of many anecdotes that
I could share with you.
We were atop Mount Rainier, and
it was my first size climb.
I had a 30 second lesson in
crampon use from Yvon, and
self-arrest at the base of
the mountain before
we got up there.
It took us a couple of days
to get up and we got up and
there was a [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
ice storm at the top.
Couldn't find our way off and
couldn't see each other.
And I'm thinking what the hell
am I doing up here, when all
of a sudden materializing out
of cold driven mist is Yvon.
And he gets right up on my face
with a big Cheshire grin on
his face and he says,
isn't this a great?
And it's been great having you
here today, Yvon, as well.
