A Tribute To Hilaree Nelson

On Monday, September 26th, Hilaree Nelson—one of the world’s most accomplished ski-mountaineers and adventure athletes—tragically passed away while descending mount Manaslu in Nepal after summiting the 26,781-foot mountain with her partner Jim Morrison. She was 49. Named one of National Geographic’s 2018 Adventurers of the Year, Hilaree was an adventurer at the absolute highest level—a giant who summited, explored & skied some of the most exotic and treacherous mountain ranges on Earth and served as an inspiration, mentor, and role model to many. In tribute to her extraordinary life, this episode is a re-release of our conversation from 2018 (RRP 364). It’s about risk, fear, resilience, potential, and the allure of the outdoors. But mostly, it's about placing yourself outside your comfort zone—and what that can teach us about potential, the preciousness of life, and what it means to be truly alive. Watch on YouTube Original Episode 364 Show Notes Rest In Power, Hilaree. Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 0:12Rich Roll?

  Hey, everyone. As many of you know, 10 days ago, on Monday, September 26, one of the world's most accomplished ski mountaineers and adventure athletes, Hilary Nelson, tragically passed away while descending Mount Manaslu in Nepal after summiting the 26,781-foot mountain with her partner, Jim Morrison. She was 49. It's a tragic loss for her family, of course, for Jim, for her two kids she leaves behind, for the adventure community, whose massive outpouring of support has been the one heartwarming

• 0:57Rich Roll?

  silver lining amidst such a grease-stricken event, also for the town of Telluride that she called home, and for the countless women athletes for whom she was an extraordinary inspiration, a mentor, and a role model. For those new to Hilary, she really was one of the greatest to ever do it, an absolute giant. And she did it at the highest level for decades, summiting, exploring, skiing, some of the most exotic and treacherous mountain ranges on earth, including being the first woman to climb both Everest and its 8,000-meter neighbor, Lotzi, in a 24-hour period, and

• 1:41Rich Roll?

  also being the first person to ski down all five of the Mongolian Altai's holy peaks. Unlike many of my friends and past podcast guests, people like Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, Lindsay Dyer, Alex Honnold, and others, I didn't know Hilary well, but I did know her. Back in 2018, I spent the better part of a day with her. She came to my house. We did a podcast. She met my family. We hung out and I gave her a ride to the other side of town. Essentially enough time to leave me, like so many, fairly grief-stricken by her loss and wanting to honor her life and her legacy. And

• 2:25Rich Roll?

  the best way that I know how to do that is to re-release that 2018 conversation. In my original introduction to that episode, I wrote, quote, "This is an incredible conversation about fear, risk, resilience, adventure, and potential. It's about balancing the pull of adventure against Hillary's responsibility as a single mom to two boys. She was single at the time. And it's about the allure of the outdoors. But mostly, this is an exchange about the virtues of placing yourself outside your comfort zone and what that can teach us about potential, the preciousness of life, and what it means

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  to be truly alive." End quote. Of course, this now leaves us asking, what is acceptable risk? Well, Hillary had her own calculation for this, and she understood and appreciated the risks that she incurred better than any of us can possibly imagine. And in the end, I think it's fair to say that she truly was alive, truly alive. And she pursued her life with this laudable vigor to the absolute fullest. And while of course, we lost her way too soon, her legacy, her influence, those things prevail. And I think much can still be learned from

• 3:53Rich Roll?

  someone who so fully embraced all of it, because none of us are promised a tomorrow. So, this is for you, Hillary. Rest in power.

• 4:09Rich Roll?

  All right, let's do it.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:11Rich Roll?

  Thanks so much.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  What are we gonna talk about?

• 4:13Rich Roll?

  I don't know. What do you want to talk about?

• 4:14Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 4:14Rich Roll?

  I got lots of stuff I want to talk about. We can talk about whatever you want to talk about. I'm just delighted to be in your presence. Super nice to meet you.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Thanks. Thanks for having me.

• 4:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, welcome to Los Angeles.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:26Rich Roll?

  I guess the first thing...

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Summertime.

• 4:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. It's right. We actually are having like a really warm day, finally. It was, it was pretty cold here, I mean, for LA a couple of days ago.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 4:33Rich Roll?

  We had frost in the mornings.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  It's funny.

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  It was exciting.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  I notoriously don't necessarily look at the weather.

• 4:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  For places I'm going, I showed up with like a down jacket and like all kinds of warm winter clothes from Tahoe.

• 4:46Rich Roll?

  Well, maybe last week that would have been appropriate.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:48Rich Roll?

  But, uh, yeah, well, yeah, I would imagine you're pretty prepared wherever you go.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Usually for snow, maybe not for like traffic, though.

• 4:58Rich Roll?

  It's funny, I came in here earlier, we were setting up and that air conditioning was on. I was like, oh, it's so cold in here. It's gonna be really cold. And I was like, wait a minute, like, I think Hillary, Hillary will be okay.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  I'll be more comfortable.

• 5:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, congratulations on being named one of the 2018 National Geographic, what is it, Adventurers of the Year?

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you.

• 5:17Rich Roll?

  That's exciting.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Thanks.

• 5:18Rich Roll?

  It's cool. What does that mean?

• 5:20Speaker 00

  It means a lot to me.

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  I worked really hard last year. I had kind of a crazy last couple of years.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Just in my life in general. And so to really go for it last year was a big deal for me. And then to be recognized by National Geographic for it was pretty, pretty awesome. It's cool.

• 5:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  I'm psyched.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  And it was, well, first of all, just for the listeners out there, I was super excited to also see Alex Honnold as one of the...

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And what he did last year was absolutely incredible.

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  He was, he was just in here a couple of weeks ago.

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Oh, was he?

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 6:01Rich Roll?

  So it was cool to talk to him.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  He's pretty awesome.

• 6:02Rich Roll?

  And also, maybe even more special, was seeing Myrna Valerio.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Right, and I don't know much about her, but I have done a little reading up on her.

• 6:12Rich Roll?

  She's really cool.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  And she sounds pretty incredible.

• 6:16Rich Roll?

  She's awesome. I've had her on the podcast, too.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:18Rich Roll?

  So I'm honored to have my third National Geogra... There's two more, right? There's five total, so I'm gonna have to track down the other two.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I think there's like eight of us for this year.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, there are, oh, there are eight.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's Killian Journay.

• 6:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, he's one, of course.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  And then this female, this surfer, I'm not, I don't know her very well.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  I don't know, I have to go back and look at the list.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:39Rich Roll?

  Cool. So, so that, that was really based on this expedition that you did this past year. I mean, you've, you've done like a bazillion. I can't keep track.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  I've done a lot, yeah.

• 6:47Rich Roll?

  I'm like, I don't even know, I can't pronounce any of these names anyway, but, but, you know, walk me through what you did this past year that got you on that inductee list.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Well, I have been obsessed with this mountain in India ever since my very first expedition. And this is going to totally date me. It was like way back in 1999.

• 7:08Rich Roll?

  Listen, I'm way older than you. Don't worry about it.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  A different century. Yeah. And so in 2017, I've made one attempt on the peak before in 2013 to no avail. Like, we didn't really get very far on the mountain at all. And in 2017, between 2013 and 2017, just a lot kind of went on in my life in general. And I'd actually had kind of a lot of not successful expeditions that I'd been a part of. In fact, some were like just total disasters. And I really wanted to go back to Papsura. It's called the Peak of Evil, which you really can't get a better name.

• 7:47Rich Roll?

  Which is like so epic. If you're going to name, you know, something like that.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it really is a good name.

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  I can understand the call.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. So there was just, it was just calling me to go back. And it was kind of like, I saw it as this circle of life, kind of of my life and sort of a place where I started and a place I wanted to go back to and ultimately, you know, end with some success. So.

• 8:14Rich Roll?

  What is it that, that spoke to you or speaks to you about the Peak of Evil? Like, why do you, why, like, I'm interested in how you make the choices that you make. And like, it seems like you're very deliberate. You take your time, but once you're in, you're all in. So what, you know, how do you make that decision? Like, why was that one so important? Even though, I know you'd been there before in 2013, but.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Well, to, just to give you a little background of how I like to climb and where I like to go, in, in nearly a 20 year career of expeditions, I've never been back to the same place twice. I like to, I've been back to regions, but never the same mountain. I really like the adventure and the mystery and the unknown and.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  All that logistical planning that goes into it. But for some reason, Papsura just kept pulling me back in. And I think in large part, when a friend of mine first showed it to me all those years ago, it just looked so unattainable and so beyond anything I had the skill set for.

• 9:19Rich Roll?

  Because?

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Because it was just this massive, incredibly remote peak with, to me, and I'm a skier first and a climber second, it just had this, I mean, I think about the aesthetic of the peak and the ski line on it, and it just gives me the chills. And it's like this photo just seared in my brain of this mountain. And I think back, I mean, I was in my early twenties when I first saw this mountain and was very new to the combination of Alpine climbing and combining it with skiing and big ski descents.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  And it just, it just seemed like this absolutely perfect mountain that I would never be able to climb. But then flash forward seventeen, eighteen years, and I just changed my skill set and I worked really hard at learning things and putting myself into different, um, difficult situations in the mountains and just getting that skill set in general.

• 10:29Rich Roll?

  So what is it that you had to master to, to do that one? Like, what was specific about that? Like, I know, it wasn't, I think I read, like, yeah, we're gonna talk about suffering. But, but I, I think I read, maybe, maybe I'm mixing up expeditions, but doesn't this have like a sixty degree descent on, like, it's super steep, right?

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, super steep. It was really steep. I was just talking about it the other day, uh, at this sort of speaking thing in, um, Estes Park in Colorado. And this guy who was a climber in the back was like, well, I mean, you had your ice axes, so, you know, if you'd lost an edge, couldn't you have self-arrested?

• 11:11Rich Roll?

  I don't even know what that means.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Self arresting basically means if you fall on something steep, you have this really pointy, sharp metal thing that you use to like slam into the side of the mountain.

• 11:20Rich Roll?

  So you don't slide all the way down.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  But the, the conditions were such that there, if, if you lost an edge, it was, there was no way you could possibly stop yourself. And it was that steep and it was, you know, kind of this hard glacial ice with just a tiny bit, you know, a couple of centimeters of snow on top of it. So it was really, um, really intense. I mean, I can't say we made a lot of ski turns. We descended on our skis.

• 11:47Rich Roll?

  Wow. How long did it take you to descend?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Four hours.

• 11:51Rich Roll?

  Four hours.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  About 3,000 feet, which if you compare that to skiing like a powdery spine in Alaska, it might take 30 seconds, you know?

• 12:00Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  So, uh, big difference in timing and just, uh, focus. And a big challenge with that face is it's, there's not, it's at the top of it is over 21,000 feet. And there's not really a way to acclimatize.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Once you're on the face, you start, you know, at 17,000 and 17,800 and you have to go all the way to the top and you can't really acclimatize in there. So, um, I mean, you're an endurance athlete yourself.

• 12:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but nothing like that.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  I know, but it's like, it's like you have to train for this endurance side of things that is really unique because it's very slow paced when you're at that high of altitude. But then also your decision-making is compromised.

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  Right. Without the oxygen.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:48Rich Roll?

  But you trained, so you did this with this guy, his name's Jim Morrison, right?

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 12:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so you weren't doing this alone.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  My significant other, yeah.

• 12:56Rich Roll?

  And, and you guys trained like on Telluride, like doing crazy.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  Right. So I think this, this was all part of the National Geographic recognition was that we started by training, uh, because for me, it's not about training to be an athlete. It's training for exposure and.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Mental state when you're in a tough position. I've been an athlete my whole life, so.

• 13:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm sorry to step on your toes with that. But like, I'm interested in, in how you see it breaking down between the, you know, how much of this is mental versus physical?

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, I, this all kind of goes into suffering. It all comes back to suffering. But for me, I like to get into that space where it becomes way more mental than physical. And I only do that through kind of intense, long endurance climbing. But obviously, you have to have a high physical level of training. And then combine that with the mental side of it. I mean, having kids really has helped train my mental, my mental fitness. But at some point, the physical fitness, the physicality of climbing only gets you so far.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  And what really helps me to succeed and maybe others like, like Alex Honnold or Conrad Anker is being able to draw physical strength through mental toughness.

• 14:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And beyond being a mother, how, I mean, how do you develop that for yourself? I mean, is that just a matter of putting you into those situations where you're tested?

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is. I, I mean, it's really easy for me to put on running shoes and go for a run and keep that physical fitness level, ride my road bike, go for a mountain bike. But to get that exposure training, I really have to put myself into situations where.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Telluride is a great place to do this because of these crazy cougars that are in the mountains there. I can get into a really tight couar that rolls to 45 degrees and then you have to pull out ropes and you can't fall or you're gonna fall over a cliff. You have to really be on every turn. And that, to me, is where the real training kicks in. And plus, you're starting to work with all the gear you need, harnesses and ropes and knots.

• 15:35Rich Roll?

  So much gear. For you, it's like even way more.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  It's ridiculous.

• 15:39Rich Roll?

  Let's define our terms here.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, I know. There's a lot of mountaineering terms that are real weird.

• 15:43Rich Roll?

  Well, first of all, when you first came across my radar, I'm like, wait, what? Like, she does what? I thought climbing or mountaineering, alpine climbing, that's its own little subculture. And then you're even, you're in this subculture within a subculture.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Subculture, yeah.

• 16:01Rich Roll?

  Ski mountaineering. And I'm like, what is that even? And where did this person come from? And how does that work? You know, like, you're not only ascending these insane peaks, but you're doing it with skis and then skiing back down.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Right, yeah. So that complicates things.

• 16:16Rich Roll?

  Why?

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Because, I mean, in some ways, I like the skiing part of it because it keeps what you're climbing up to a certain level, because you have to be able to ski down it. So I'm not climbing up a cap carrying skis on my back.

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  That would be interesting.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  That would be interesting. You know, so it has to be some sort of, I don't know, mountain or objective that while it has pretty intense alpine climbing side to it, you still have to be able to ski down it.

• 16:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  Or ski descend.

• 16:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how many people are in this little world?

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, it's such a small little niche.

• 16:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  I mean, backcountry skiing or sidecountry skiing, which is when you would go up Mammoth and you would go out a backcountry, I don't know if Mammoth has backcountry gates, but you'd go into the sidecountry. Backcountry is where you're just ski touring. There's tons of that in the Sierra Mountains. There's tons of that all over the US, the Alps, where you put skins on your skis and you walk up something and you ski back down. Ski mountaineering, I define it as something that's more multi-day. And typically requires travel to some sort of foreign exotic adventurous place. That's not, doesn't have to be, but that's ski mountaineering. And ski mountaineering to me involves crampons, which are the spiky things on your bottom of your boots,

• 17:44Speaker 00

  and ice axes and harnesses, and there's a huge climbing aspect to it.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's so dynamic because you have to be, you have to be so multidisciplinary.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 17:55Rich Roll?

  In your approach.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  And it's different from alpine climbing in the sense that a lot of ski mountaineering, even though you're with partners, you're, you're doing all the climbing by soloing. You're not necessarily roped together. And that was the case on Papsuera, which was, you know, a 3,000 foot, 50 to 60 degree, basically ice face that you're just soloing. And, um.

• 18:23Rich Roll?

  And why do you think you were able to master it this time? Like, what happened in 2013? What changed that allowed you to conquer it?

• 18:32Speaker 00

  Well, the beauty of going back to a second place, or going back to a place a second time, is you have done all the reconnaissance. And so that was new to me and it really just allowed me to not have to focus so much on the logistical planning and really just focus on the mountain and the peak. And having already seen it and knowing what it was all about. There was a third member that went with us, so we were a team of three this time. And Chris Figginsaw, he was with me in 2013. I made a lot of logistical changes in that we went later in the year. So we went this time in May instead of March.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  And we went with just three of us in 2013. There were like seven of us, which is just too many for a face like that. And we approached differently. So the biggest problem in 2013 was that we only had eyes for one particular route. And after coming home and thinking about it and thinking how dangerous that particular approach was.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  I was able to look at the face differently and realize that there was a different approach that was much safer and longer and better skiing, actually. So those kind of changes were made between the two expeditions. And in my first try, we actually did this huge, like 40 to 50 mile ski traverse at altitude and tried to climb. And this time, we just went straight in and straight out.

• 20:05Rich Roll?

  Right, interesting.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:07Rich Roll?

  So, well, congrats on that.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:10Rich Roll?

  It's pretty amazing. And, and just kind of looking at, at your career, I mean, what you've done, I don't know, 40, 50 of these expeditions.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, 40, yeah, a lot of expeditions.

• 20:20Rich Roll?

  I mean, there's so many of them, I had to like make this like cheat sheet. But it's like, you know, some of the highlights, like first to climb Everest and Lautse in 24 hours.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:29Rich Roll?

  Has, has anybody done that since? Not the first woman, the first person, right?

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Well, first, I mean, probably, yeah, well, and with my partner, yeah, in 24 hours.

• 20:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's so crazy.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:42Rich Roll?

  So, Kilimanjaro with a broken leg.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was, oh, it was pretty intense. And with my kids, oh, my gosh, and they were four.

• 20:50Rich Roll?

  Right, with your kids, which we're going to talk about. First ski descents of big peaks in Mongolia, India, Russia, and Greenland.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:00Rich Roll?

  And, and what's interesting is you're probably best known for this epic expedition in 2014 where you went to Burma.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:10Rich Roll?

  And attempted this mountain called Khakuborazay.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Khakuborazay.

• 21:18Rich Roll?

  Khakuborazay. I was almost there. I almost got it.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  You pretty much had it.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  I watched the documentary Down to Nothing, which was beautiful. I mean, the cinematography is so extraordinary.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  I mean, that is a story in and of itself with Renan Osterk and Corey Richards making.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  Massive efforts and sacrifices in making that film.

• 21:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, I mean, let's talk about this for a little bit. I think, just as a prefatory comment, even discussing this particular expedition, I find, what I find interesting about your career is, you know, there's a lot of missteps and, you know, quote unquote, I hate that word, failure, but like where you miss the mark.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  But there's been a lot, yeah, yeah.

• 22:01Rich Roll?

  And, and you just keep going. And, and so I'm interested in your relationship with failure. Like, what does that mean? What does it represent to you? How does it, you know, motivate you or play into how you approach each adventure? And think about it in the aftermath.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Well, ski mountaineering, alpine climbing, I think expeditions in general, don't typically have, over the span of a career, a high percentage of success rate. So I would say, I mean, I'm probably pretty 50/50 on success. And, you know, I, I like getting to the top of a mountain, as silly as that sounds.

• 22:42Rich Roll?

  Well, of course, the amount of energy that would drive you to do this, you know, that's obviously very important.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, and you put so much effort. Like Burma, for example, was two years of planning before we actually even stepped foot in the country. And, I mean, I, I went to Pakistan for an 8,000 meter peak when my first son was 10 months old and didn't summit, you know? And that was like heartbreaking to make this time away and not be successful. So there's, there's a lot of things that I perceive as failures, but I've also had to sort of redefine what success means to me along the way.

• 23:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  And success, in some ways, is here, sitting here with you, and telling stories about these expeditions and things that I've learned about human nature and interpersonal relationships and...

• 23:41Speaker 00

  Banging your head against a wall sometimes and overcoming failure is become sort of, I guess, my success story in some weird, twisted way.

• 23:55Rich Roll?

  So if you had to distill down those lessons, and I know you get up in front of people all the time, you're getting a talk tonight, what is that message that you're trying to convey when you tell these stories?

• 24:10Speaker 00

  I think it's truly, truly a necessity to have a passion as a compass in life. But to have a passion on some levels really sucks and it's hard. And if it's worth it, you're gonna fall on your face several times on your way to like, sort of, reaching the goal that is the fulfillment of this passion. And I've done it epically on many levels, but I

• 24:48Speaker 00

  I think happiness is not a great word to use. I don't like that word. I think just in search of happiness or fulfillment or just

• 25:01Speaker 00

  a deeper understanding of my own self and how I can inspire people has been really the culmination of those times falling on my face.

• 25:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right, right, right.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  And reaching that passion, so.

• 25:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so in other words, like, passion is, you know, has its, has its beauty and it has its dark side.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  It has a really dark side, too.

• 25:25Rich Roll?

  And it's a, you know, it's a close bedfellow of obsession, which I know that you are familiar with.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  Fine line between the two.

• 25:33Rich Roll?

  And the pursuit of that passion or the following of that obsession, in your case, involves, you know, suffering and also elation, right? But suffering is unavoidable. In fact, suffering is a key component to connecting with yourself in that way, like, on that path to like, you know, really trying to understand what makes you tick so that you can come back. More fulfilled with something to say, right?

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  Is that accurate?

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, I think, I think it comes down to how, if you don't have suffering in your life, how do you experience the opposite? How do you understand what elation is, what fulfillment is, if you don't experience the opposite? And if you haven't had major failures in your life and been able to make something of them, turn them into something you've learned from, then how do you appreciate the successes that you have in life?

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  It's all connected.

• 26:39Rich Roll?

  It is, it is. And I think, well, a couple of observations. You know, most people, maybe not most people, but there's a lot of people who, who don't have that true north that drives them. They don't have a passion, or they don't know what it feels like to have some form of healthy obsession that propels them forward. You know, and that combined with a culture that emphasizes, you know, security and safety and luxury and comfort at the, you know, at the forsaking of suffering, creates a population of people who are not connected in the way that you're intimately familiar with, right?

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  So I would imagine when you go and you speak, you probably meet a lot of people that might say something along those lines to you, like, I don't know, you know, how does that feel to be that way? How do I find my passion?

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Right. I definitely get a lot of questions of like, what drives you? What, what makes you go back to, to continue doing this? And I don't always have-

• 27:40Rich Roll?

  From a place of confusion, or like, yeah, like, why, why?

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Why?

• 27:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  And, you know, there's been plenty of times in my life when I'm, and take peak of evil, for instance, when I like, wake up in the middle of the night. Obsessing, you know, this crazy dream that I'm back on that mountain and I have to go back. And I mean, believe me, I just wish it would go away sometimes and I could just be content with being comfortable and having showers and.

• 28:11Rich Roll?

  Right. Almost like you have no free will, like you're fulfilling some past life destiny. It's like the reincarnation of a Himalayan Sherpa or something.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Something.

• 28:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's wild. It's cool. I mean, look, you know, the subject of, I mean, suffering is something I, you know, appreciate and understand the value of. And I've had plenty of guests and lots of your North Face teammates, you know, sat across from me and I, you know, I'm remembering Dean Karnaz speaking eloquently about, you know, the importance of suffering in his own life as a really as a tool, as a vehicle to, you know, to that deepening, that quickening of connection with self that allows you to really understand what makes you tick and be a fully integrated person, right?

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  And so whether it's running or climbing or whatever your, your driving North Star is.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe it's music, maybe it's your job or your family, whatever it is. You have to work hard for it, something you just have to work hard for.

• 29:14Rich Roll?

  And, and, and stop looking for the shortcut, but actually embrace that difficult journey ahead.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah.

• 29:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I just popped into my mind that movie Whiplash. Did you see that movie about the drummer?

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So it's like, that's an analogous example. It's just a different context, but it's kind of that same message.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Suffering and enduring discomfort. And I mean, and I've said this a bunch of times, like one of my biggest fears in life is getting, is just being too comfortable and, you know, having every day be the same. And I think I go to sometimes unhealthy extremes to

• 29:58Speaker 00

  keep that from coming to pass, you know?

• 30:00Rich Roll?

  So let me throw a word at you and, and if you could respond, what, what comes to mind when I say balance?

• 30:13Speaker 00

  I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is...

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  Why don't you just have a balanced life?

• 30:17Speaker 00

  I get asked a lot, like, how do you balance it all? And I don't. To me, balance is a moving target. I think it's this sort of ever-morphing thing that I strive for. How do I balance being a mom, doing these expeditions? I find myself compartmentalizing a lot. And I don't, I just, I don't have a lot of balance in my life, basically.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Well, I think, you know, I think we're, we've become confused about this subject matter of like, how do you, how do you live a balanced life? Or how do you find balance? It's more, for me, like reconciling, like, my love for the suffering and all these other things that other people would think is, is out of balance. Like, that's my equilibrium point. Like, the pendulum is swinging, you know? It always has to come back to the center.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  That's a good way of looking at it, actually. Yeah, I like that.

• 31:24Rich Roll?

  It's just, if you look at your, the way I describe it for myself, and maybe you'll relate to this, is like, if you look at your life over a one-year, or two-year, or three-year period, like, it probably looks balanced, the time with your kid, whatever. It's not going to look like somebody else's life. But, yeah, it's not balanced to like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, my kids are gonna stay at home, and I'm gonna go to Pakistan.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's not balanced in the traditional sense. But that's something that you are compelled to do in order for you to find your own equanimity, right?

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 32:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so it's...

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, when I look at my life over a longer stretch of time, I see the balance in that length of time. When I look at, yeah, in the macro. When I look at it in this micro picture, to me, it's, you know, there's a lot of highs and lows, and there's, there's, you know, just... Swinging back and forth and craziness and I think, I think climbing and expedition life in general lends itself to crazy emotional swings where you're and, and as an athlete yourself, I'm sure you can relate to this, you, you have these goals and you focus so hard within the moment to attain these goals. And then when you get there, it's kind of

• 32:45Speaker 00

  like this, this crazy letdown on some level. And so emotionally, you're, you're kind of this, this up and down yo-yo effect. But yeah, over time in the macro picture, it's, it smoothens out, it normalizes, it balances itself.

• 33:05Rich Roll?

  I like how, uh, I, I cracked up when I saw this, that like you're trying to sort of, in an effort to kind of maybe normalize a little bit. You're like, I need to be home a little bit more. So rather than go out on three or four expeditions a year, I'm going to do one and I'm going to do an Ironman. Like that'll give me more time with my kids. Like most people's like, an Ironman, you're never going to be home. You know, it's like for you, that's like really like shrinking it down to a manageable task.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was my 2000, that was my 2016. I don't, I didn't go on a single expedition, but I-

• 33:38Rich Roll?

  How'd the Ironman go?

• 33:39Speaker 00

  I did an Ironman.

• 33:40Rich Roll?

  Which one did you do?

• 33:42Speaker 00

  It was in North Carolina and, uh, it was a new one. And I don't know if they did it again, but they cut the bike ride in half because they'd just gotten that big hurricane and, um, so-

• 33:56Rich Roll?

  You got gypped.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  I got a little gypped. So now I guess, now I'm like, I have to do another one.

• 34:00Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, let's talk about the Kakubo Razi.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Kakubo Razi, oh.

• 34:07Rich Roll?

  So in this movie, I mean, look, there's so many like interesting aspects to this expedition, but, um, but you know, I think one of the things that made it super unique is, well, you, I want you to describe it, but you had this like 30 day trek, you know, through, you know, the jungle just to get to like the base camp, right? And that was like, you know, before you even start actually ascending this incredible mountain, you guys are just, have already met and faced and had to overcome like a bazillion unforeseen obstacles.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  It's crazy.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:43Rich Roll?

  Why don't you just like helicopter into base camp and- Why'd you make it harder than it already was?

• 34:50Speaker 00

  The premise behind that expedition, like, the majority of us had just come off of the Mount Everest climb a few years before. And we were really like trying to do something very anti Everest in the sense of just a complete unknown adventure. And that involved traveling overland. So they're really, first of all, there isn't really an option to fly in with a helicopter. It's just, doesn't happen there and it's super sketchy and I wouldn't want to be in a helicopter that would fly that far north in that particular country in that region.

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  Right, so we're in Burma, Myanmar.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  So we're in Burma.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  It's the same thing, right?

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Myanmar, yes. So right before we went in 2014, Obama officially, as the United States, recognized the new name and started calling it Myanmar. So we, you know, in the film, I think we refer to it as Myanmar, but yeah, Burma, Myanmar. And I go back and forth in how I use it because it's still the Burmese people that live in Myanmar. But we ended up, I mean, Myanmar is a unique place to begin with, had been closed off for decades to Westerners, most definitely in that very northern region. And something a lot of people don't know, I didn't really even realize this, is that it's the Himalayas that dropped down into the northern part of Burma.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  And that's where we were headed. So it's the very eastern tail of the Himalayas that end in Burma.

• 36:26Rich Roll?

  And so the idea was, you're going to chart this mountain. It's never been ascended and no one really knows exactly how high it is, right? So you're going to get a GPS reading on it and make it official.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Right, so it had been climbed once in 1996 by this Japanese man who had subsequently been killed on Everest a few years later. And he was a famous, you know, Japanese climber. I'm totally spacing his name right now, of course, because I, whatever. But he described it as the most difficult mountain he'd ever been on or near. And he, he made it to the top on his third climb, his third attempt. And didn't have any kind of GPS.

• 37:08Rich Roll?

  He did the jungle thing?

• 37:09Speaker 00

  He did the jungle thing. He did the jungle jungle trek multiple times.

• 37:12Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  And but that was 20 years.

• 37:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Prior to our trip. So and no one had really been in there since then. So it was just an adventure and we went overland from Yangon, which is over 1,000 miles south of the mountain and walked 150 miles through the jungle over two weeks.

• 37:36Rich Roll?

  Right. So yeah, it was it was like day 30 when you finally got to like.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  It was day 30 when we got to base camp. From the day we left the United States to base camp was 30 days.

• 37:44Rich Roll?

  And what was cool in the movie is there's little dials, like odometers for like your food, you know, like how much food you have. And you could see it like, oh, man, it's gonna be it's gonna be a problem.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that was the biggest problem was running out of food. And there were just, you know, unforeseen things like getting bribed out of our rice reserves by the sort of military outpost in some of these remote villages. And

• 38:08Rich Roll?

  And like your gas didn't work right or something like that?

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And we, you know, my, my history in planning expeditions is doing it in Nepal and India and even Pakistan, where they have a huge history of climbers coming to their mountains. And that history just doesn't exist, that infrastructure for climbers is non-existent in Burma. And so finding porters to carry, help carry our loads back to this incredibly technical peak and having enough food to get us back there. Like, you know, we needed 80 porters.

• 38:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  We had about 25 or 30. So we had to cut our gear by two thirds. It just, you know, it was just, it was epic.

• 38:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, and I think I've heard you say this before, like, like, that's adventure. Adventure is, is adventure begins when things start going wrong.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 39:08Rich Roll?

  Like, you know, if it all goes smooth, then how much of an adventure was it really?

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, and the irony is that, you know, yeah, we spent two years planning this trip and then you get there and everything you planned just kind of goes out the window.

• 39:19Rich Roll?

  And right.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  But, you know, you have to take time to get permits and just, just legal logistical things. And then, once you're actually there and The immigration officers are stopping you in the airport and telling you that your, all these permits you worked so hard to get are no good and you can't get on the plane and you can't get, I mean, it was just one thing after another, but.

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so you had to throw down some, some dollars here and there.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  There was a little, there was a little bit of a, little bit of smoothing things out along the way. There was.

• 39:49Rich Roll?

  And, and there's no, like, you were like, trying to figure this out on Google Maps, right? There's no like Route Maps or anything like that.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  There's no Route Maps. There's no information on the peak whatsoever. And Google only can take you so far. And, you know, of course, like, a lot of, 90% of the technical part of the climb on Google Maps, when you look at the imagery, is all like blurred out. So you can't really tell what you're up against. And, uh, yeah, I mean, it was, on one hand, it was totally awesome. I mean, it was exactly what we were looking for. We just forgot to remind ourselves of that when we were in it.

• 40:27Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And this was a National Geographic, like, sponsored expedition. And you were the team leader. There were five of you. There was one other woman.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:38Rich Roll?

  And there's been, you know, there's sort of this widely, you know, documented, publicized rift that took place when it came to who was going to make the final push up to the summit.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  And that was, you know, in the movie, it kind of just glossed over that aspect.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 40:55Rich Roll?

  It didn't make a big deal of that, but there's certainly been a lot written about that. And you were, you know, kind of outspoken about not being one of those people. And, and I think it's a, if you're willing to talk about it, you know, in light of kind of, you know, we're having a cultural moment right now.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:11Rich Roll?

  Female empowerment.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  The male female.

• 41:13Rich Roll?

  And, you know, this is your, this is your time, Hillary. You know, this is an amazing moment right now. And as somebody who is, you know, a phenomenal female role model, you know, an embodiment of female empowerment, can you walk me through like, what happened and, and kind of how you, I mean, that was, this was a couple of years ago now, like, how, you know, your, your perspective on it now, in all, in light of kind of what's happening at the moment?

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Right. So it, this has always been a hard thing for the last few years for me to really talk about in a clear, succinct way. There, like, so many things in life. There were so many complicating factors and contributing.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Personalities, contributing histories that made this situation so unique and so difficult. I have been climbing and skiing mountains for, like I said, a really long time, and I've never experienced this type of team dynamic before. And I think, you know, whether or not I should have been on the three out of the five of us to go to the summit, I should have been included in the conversation. And that's where things really went south. But if I can paint you a picture of where we were, you know, we

• 42:37Speaker 00

  left base camp with really like eight days of food to go off into more absolutely unknown terrain. We made it up to this high ridge at about 18,000 feet, and it's incredibly exposed. So maybe it's only eight feet wide at most and 50 feet long, and it just drops off into sheer cliffs all around it. So the wind was blowing, you know, gusting 50, 60 miles an hour, and we're trying to have these conversations and figure out how we're going to go forward. And

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  The stress and the

• 43:10Speaker 00

  The stress. We were already, you know, fairly starving. We already felt like we'd just skirted death several times, just even getting to base camp. And there were, you know, really, I conceived of this trip with a co-leader on the expedition, Mark Jenkins, and he was a writer for National Geographic and has done tons of expeditions himself and is a writer, which I said. And what happened was basically the disintegration of our relationship as climbing partners on this expedition. And

• 43:52Speaker 00

  I think my naivete, if you will, was that I thought the trip was about the two of us climbing. And to me, sometimes that's more important than really reaching the summit. It's really just maintaining that partnership and that interpersonal relationship. And Mark had this whole back history going on of where he'd been there to try this mountain before with his two best friends, who in the intervening years had both been killed in climbing accidents. And I think his vision was that he was going to climb with Renan and Cory and sort of reenact this moment that he wanted to relive to honor his best friends.

• 44:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  And I knew nothing about that. And so he just sort of manipulated the situation to where he was climbing with Cory and Renan and just completely cut Emily and I out of the equation. Emily admittedly was, Emily Harrington, who's an incredible climber.

• 44:47Rich Roll?

  I mean, she kind of said, like, I'm done, I'm good.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  She was done. She was pushed to her point. But in no small part because of the pressures from the rest of the team put on her. But it was, this was new terrain for her. So her stepping out of it was totally understandable and the right thing. And I think it was just the way it came across at High Camp where I found myself in this position of like, totally shocked and like, what are you guys talking about? Like, what do you mean I'm not part of this climb to the summit? Like, I know how to climb and my climbing came into question.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  And it was just really an awful, uncomfortable situation. And.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Sent me into quite a tailspin for months after the expedition of was this a female thing because as a female in a mostly male climbing world, I am constantly feeling like I have to prove myself. And you know, at some point, when I've been doing this long enough, it's like, all right, I am who I am. I am what I am.

• 46:05Rich Roll?

  You're National Geographic Adventure of the Year.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  Like, I don't think you have anything to prove to anybody. But I can imagine, you know, how challenge, I mean, I can barely imagine like how challenging that must have been. So these three guys go off, they make the push, they ultimately have to retreat.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  And then you've got like the movie just kind of, you know, suddenly, you know, flash forward and you guys are home, basically. But like,

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:29Rich Roll?

  You had to go, you had to do that hike again with them.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, we had to hike all that way out again.

• 46:34Rich Roll?

  With the fractured, you know, there's no unity amongst the group anymore. Did you have to repair that to make it home?

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, we did. We did repair it to some extent, for sure, with Corey and Renan. And Corey Richards, who's one of the most incredible photographers I've ever been able to work with, and he's a National Geographic photographer, and he just has incredible raw talent. But he's also a very temperamental person. He is incredibly confrontational, and we've done stuff together, and we have these, this interaction where we can like growl at each other and fight.

• 47:17Rich Roll?

  And get over it.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  And then we get over it, and we talk about it, and we work through it, and we move on. And that is exactly what happened with Burma. And Renan is quite different in that he's very stoic. He's, he's quiet. He, he doesn't go, you know, deep into conversation about these things. But

• 47:38Speaker 00

  You know, that's just his way of dealing with a situation. But we, you know, talked quite a bit as well on the way out. And really, it was just Mark who really dug his heels in about both Emily and I and not considering our skills to be up to par. There was, I don't know if you read some of Mark's blogs?

• 48:04Rich Roll?

  No, I didn't go that deep in.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was.

• 48:07Rich Roll?

  But I heard there was some remarks that were made and then you were placed in a position of having to respond to that.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:14Rich Roll?

  Are you guys like, are you good now? Or is that just broken?

• 48:17Speaker 00

  No, not really. And I'm okay with that too.

• 48:20Rich Roll?

  With Renan also?

• 48:21Speaker 00

  No, no, Renan and I are great. And Corey and I are great. And same with Emily. But Mark, just, he's, you know, he beats to his own drum to begin with. And I am old enough, wise enough, if I could use that word, to just not need to repair certain relationships and to be okay with that.

• 48:45Rich Roll?

  I got you. Well, let's, let's, let's take it back a little bit.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 48:49Rich Roll?

  I think to really understand. Talk about nicer things. Well, I mean, I wanted to talk about that and I appreciate your being open about that. In order to really kind of understand your career and what makes you tick, I think we really have to understand your background, your childhood a little bit.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:07Rich Roll?

  You know, you grew up in a very interesting, you know, adventuresome type of family situation. You guys would go on these crazy boat trips and.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:16Rich Roll?

  But it wasn't like you were that little kid skier from day one, like you were playing all kinds of sports, right?

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  Grew up in Seattle.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  I grew up in Seattle and I kind of had this same sort of life that I see myself in now, only mine's a little more extreme. But we were the very like.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Normal mom stayed at home, dad went to work. I played traditional sports, so did my brother and sister. We lived in the suburbs and in the summers, we would get on this old wooden Chris Craft boat and then go off and have these crazy adventures up in the inside passage in Canada. And, you know, we'd be on the boat for weeks on end, you know, sometimes, you know, the whole summer, you name it. And this was before cell phones and things like that.

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. So, yeah, I mean, the freedom and the, the kind of, um, I don't know, openness of that, I would imagine, kind of informed your path on some level for what happened later.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  Right, I mean, the way I kind of look at it is I had this, these really two strong influences. And one is that structure of team sports. And for me, it was basketball, which was the main one. And, and then I had this freedom and this wild side, whereas like a five-year-old, I'm running my own boat and, you know, and like black waters of Canada and on these beaches. And there's bears and fishing and all of that. And kind of pairing those two sides to me is very, um, sort of mirrors where I'm at now, where I have this home life and kids. And, and then I go off on these big expeditions.

• 51:02Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  And kind of how, how, a lot of times I feel like I'm two different people.

• 51:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It sounds like dad was kind of intense.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  My dad was pretty intense.

• 51:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah?

• 51:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  Like, I gotta go, he was like the guy at the soccer games or the basketball games, like getting heated.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:21Rich Roll?

  He's that guy.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  He's that guy.

• 51:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  I can't, I mean, there are countless games, basketball games, and he just got straight up thrown out of the gym. And, uh, you know, he, he was my coach. So basically, I played basketball with the same group of women from the time I was... Seven years old to 18 years old.

• 51:42Rich Roll?

  And he wanted you to be like a college basketball player?

• 51:45Speaker 00

  He wanted me to be a college basketball player and he was very much, I mean, he still watches the videotapes of my basketball games and still is like, I can't believe you missed that shot.

• 51:57Rich Roll?

  Are you serious?

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yeah.

• 52:01Rich Roll?

  Wow. So that's, I mean, look, that's heavy, right?

• 52:05Speaker 00

  It's heavy, yeah.

• 52:05Rich Roll?

  I mean, when you're in it, when you're a kid, you don't know any different, but like,

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Right, you don't know any different.

• 52:09Rich Roll?

  That's an intense situation, so.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  And he was really intense with my brother and my sister and just.

• 52:14Rich Roll?

  And where are you in the pecking order of your siblings?

• 52:16Speaker 00

  I am the youngest.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  You're the youngest?

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. So he maintained that and did he, was he throwing down on the, on your brothers and sisters too? Or?

• 52:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, much more so than me. I think I got the, I got the.

• 52:26Rich Roll?

  He mellowed by the time he got to you.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  He mellowed a little bit by the time he got to me.

• 52:30Rich Roll?

  Not too much, though.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Well, and I also learned how to like, kind of duck and dive. I was pretty good at it, so.

• 52:35Rich Roll?

  But with that comes generally, you know, that, that sort of, I mean, you want that approval, right? Like you're, you're like.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 52:45Rich Roll?

  You know, if he's like, hey, you should have done this, you should have done that, like.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, and it's funny, I mean, I, of course, then ultimately went down a path that he doesn't, an athletic path that he doesn't understand or relate to and, and to his credit, he supported me the whole way and has done, you know, a lot of effort trying to understand it a little bit better and, you know, would pull along the way of being like, when are you going to get a real job? When are you going to stop doing this? And I think in large part because what I do scares my parents.

• 53:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it scares most people.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:26Rich Roll?

  They're not unique in that. But the, but it doesn't even kick in until you're at Colorado College, right?

• 53:33Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 53:34Rich Roll?

  So, I mean, were you going to play basketball at Colorado College? Or you just decided you weren't going to be a basketball player or what?

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Well, I had decided I wasn't going to be a basketball player.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  Dad had a different plan?

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Dad had a different plan, so he, he went out to school and not, Colorado College doesn't have like a, a major basketball team.

• 53:51Rich Roll?

  I've been there, I spoke there, yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  You know, that's not their focus. It's not that kind of place, so. He came out with me like that orientation week and you know, and I'd already told him I wasn't going to play basketball. And I very much remember him being like, you know, I just want to let's go, let's just go look at the gym and

• 54:05Rich Roll?

  They have a team though.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  They have a team and he'd actually secretly set up this meeting with the coach, telling her that I wanted to play. And oh my gosh, it resulted in probably one of the biggest fights I've ever had with my dad. But it also ping ponged me like off the sidelines and away from the

• 54:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're going, I'm going the other way.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was like, I think I'm gonna go on the mountains.

• 54:29Rich Roll?

  Like, why is he wired like that?

• 54:31Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, he, I think it was a part of his kid's life that he could tangibly have an effect on and be present for. And he didn't have that in his own life growing up. And so he really went deep with it. And I, you know, I learned a lot from him. And some of it is the opposite of probably how he meant for me to absorb what he was

• 55:01Rich Roll?

  But the drive, the focus, the ability to like, really like, prepare, like, all of that diligence, I would imagine, you know, in some respect is driven by, you know, kind of growing up underneath his umbrella.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would say, yeah.

• 55:17Rich Roll?

  All right. So you're at Colorado College, you have the blowout with the dad, there's no basketball happening. You figure out like, oh, skiing's pretty good here. And there's lots of cool mountains. And you just get into it. That's where it kind of begins?

• 55:29Speaker 00

  I mean, I luckily, like, first week of going to Colorado College, I kind of fell in with this group of friends that were rock climbers and backcountry skiers and just way more into that adventure side of things that I didn't know anything about. I mean, I grew up in Seattle, Washington, where most mountaineers like go to be mountaineers. And I left Seattle to learn how to be a mountaineer. So It was really just about who I started connecting with. And that school in particular really encourages sort of these alternative sports and adventures.

• 56:07Rich Roll?

  Well, they have that cool thing where you just do one class for like, I don't know, a month. And then you get all this, you get like a week off or something like that.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  And so we'd have these block breaks where we'd go to Red Rocks in Nevada and do these huge climbs. Or, you know, you're surrounded by Colorado 14ers. And I started like climbing up mountains to ski down them and had never used my athleticism in that way. And I would never say that I am like this incredible downhill skier. I'm really good at it, but I'm not Ingrid Backstrom. Or I'm not like a Lindsey Vonn by any stretch of the imagination. But you put those together and it's like, ah.

• 56:48Rich Roll?

  Like this magical thing, right? So, so when you first tapped into this, is there like a knowingness like, oh, this is my, this is going to be my thing? Or was it just a gradual like, yeah, I like this. I want to do a little bit more and it just kind of evolved or?

• 57:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was pretty gradual for me. It was gradual. I just, the more, because I mean, you have to understand, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I didn't even know rock climbing existed until I was 19. And went to the Garden of the Gods the first time and was like, whoa, ropes and harnesses. And what is all this? And I, I mean, I just, I loved it.

• 57:31Rich Roll?

  Right. So you decided to go to Chamonix.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:35Rich Roll?

  That was right after you graduated?

• 57:36Speaker 00

  I was just going to go for a few months. Yeah.

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  And then you were there for like five or six years, right?

• 57:39Speaker 00

  I was there for a really long time.

• 57:41Rich Roll?

  But that's like kind of the Mecca, right? This is where all these people are going?

• 57:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was the Mecca. And I went there really because of the downhill skiing that I'd seen in like all the ski movies of that era, the Blizzard of Oz, and so on and so forth. And ended up realizing what a huge component climbing is to the skiing that takes place in Chamonix. And that was when I started getting into ice axes and. Crampons and all that technical side that goes with

• 58:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Ice and snow and glaciers and all of that.

• 58:18Rich Roll?

  And was there a thing at that time called like ski mountaineering? Or were you, I mean, was there, there's a community there, right? But was there a community in that specific discipline? Or does that just go with like, hey, if you're gonna ski, you gotta like hike with the stuff?

• 58:33Speaker 00

  I think it was more of the latter. It was like, hey, if you're gonna ski, you have to take, because there, lift access is so integrated with climbing mountains and skiing. So it's all, it was before we had sort of access off of our own ski areas in the United States. Everything was really boundaried in the US at that point. So, and it's not so much anymore. But in Chamonix, you could get off a lift and go anywhere you wanted.

• 59:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  I mean, I remember the statistic when I first moved there that on average, one person a day died in the Chamonix Valley.

• 59:09Rich Roll?

  One a day?

• 59:09Speaker 00

  One a day. And it was just from falling in crevasses and ice.

• 59:13Rich Roll?

  This is before wingsuits and all of that.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  This is before wingsuits and all of that. So I'm sure the number and, and yeah, base jumping and just.

• 59:20Rich Roll?

  Slack lining.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:21Rich Roll?

  Whatever people are doing.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, everything. So, so it was also my introduction to the pitfalls of this thing that I love so much. And, you know, starting to see people closer and closer to me, you know, dying in the mountains and what that meant and processing that. And that eventually was the reason I left Chamonix was because I was becoming very flippant and unemotional towards death. And I didn't think that was okay. It was really scary.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  Was there, was there a moment like, how many, how many people that you knew passed away during that period of time?

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Oh, a lot.

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot. I mean.

• 1:00:09Rich Roll?

  And you're 23 or something like that?

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was 23, yeah.

• 1:00:13Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  24, yeah. I think I left there by the time I was 28. And it was a lot.

• 1:00:18Rich Roll?

  You just, you just start to normalize it like.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you start to really normalize it and.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's just not okay.

• 1:00:28Rich Roll?

  Does it make you feel like less precious about your own life though? Because you see it so much and does, I mean, how did that impact how you assessed risk at that time?

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  I don't think I was good at assessing risk at that time. I think I just didn't know enough. I mean, I really, and I've said this before, it's a miracle I survived that first winter in Chamonix because I just was blindly following and woo-hoo and let's go this way.

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  So it was a wicked, steep learning curve at first. And I mean, I like, I was like flying tandem off the north face of the Agüita Medí in my first couple of weeks being there and just-

• 1:01:11Rich Roll?

  I don't know what that is, but that sounds radical.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  It's, yeah, it's scary not knowing what you're doing and-

• 1:01:17Rich Roll?

  I think it was 96 when you won like the extreme skiing-

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:21Rich Roll?

  Championships or whatever, you know, so it's like-

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  And the playing field was like me and two other women.

• 1:01:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  So it was really new.

• 1:01:29Rich Roll?

  And you could have just done that, right? Like, I would have thought like, whoa, oh, well, this is obviously my thing.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  Right, but at the same time, I was also doing these touring combo ski competitions where you're, you're almost like, they're called rando races now, where you're kind of ski touring through the peaks and then you rip the skins off and you ski something and I was doing really well in those. And I just found sort of more satisfaction. I'm not somebody who really likes to jump off cliffs and stuff. And that was more the extreme comps and-

• 1:02:05Rich Roll?

  And it's, it's a distinction between competition and pure adventure for the sake of adventure.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 1:02:13Rich Roll?

  All right, so then, then everything kind of changes when North Face enters the equation, right? Which is in the sort of tail end of that experience.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Right in the middle of that, yeah, like, well, no, kind of the tail end. Yeah, it was in 99, so- I'd been there three years. It was a little, yeah, towards the tail end.

• 1:02:29Rich Roll?

  And they're like, hey, we want to pay you and you can go do all this cool stuff. And you're like, wait, I can have this as a career and get paid to do what I'm going to be doing anyway? Like, that's crazy. Like, did that, did it strike you before that? Like, oh, I can have a career doing this? I mean,

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  No, not really. I mean, I thought I could. At the time in Chemini, I was doing great at making enough money to perpetuate staying there. So I was, you know, winning money from competitions. I was doing some really cheesy ski modeling and like, you know, Bogner one pieces.

• 1:03:03Rich Roll?

  Are those pictures on the internet?

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  Pretty funny.

• 1:03:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  And then, and then I kind of got on the map with North Base through a friend who was an athlete with them at the time. And he sort of bridged that connection, which is how a lot of paths get taken, I think, in life is just connections and timing. And three weeks later, I was on an expedition in India.

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  Which was where I saw Papsura, the peak of evil, to bring it all full circle.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  And I mean, that

• 1:03:39Rich Roll?

  And that was it.

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  That threw in like high altitude and winter camping and heavy packs. And I just loved it. I don't know. It was, I think a big part too was like this wide eyed girl who'd hardly traveled in her whole life and going to India and this culture and the craziness and madness of India was just really eye opening for me.

• 1:04:03Rich Roll?

  And now, having visited all these amazing places over the years, like, what do you take away from being immersed in these various cultures? Like, how does that impact you in terms of how you perceive life here in America? Like, is it, does it change or shift your value set at all?

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Most definitely. I, I, I talk about this a lot with my kids even trying to explain like mom's reentry into the United States of America and what that means. And I have a hard time with it. I think that some of the systems we have in place in this country are

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Detrimental to the soul of us as human beings.

• 1:04:59Rich Roll?

  Well, we're certainly not the happiest culture.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  No, we're not the happiest culture. And I think that's the thing that stuck with me the most from my very first trip to India, was going through, seeing real poverty for the first time and shacks and shanties and kids with no shoes and dirty clothes and, you know, families living in a hundred square foot hovel, basically. And what really struck me was the smiles on these kids' faces and the closeness of the family unit and the brightness in their eyes.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  To me, looked like happiness in a form I'd never seen it before. And in a place I couldn't even conceive of. And how do you reconcile that with what we as Americans consider happiness of like the new car and the big house and the white picket fence and possessions?

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  The latest phone.

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:06:12Rich Roll?

  So how do you reconcile that as a mother with two boys that are what, like 10 and eight or something like that right now?

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, 10 and eight. You know, it's, I like to, I have, I've taken my kids to Nepal, I've taken them to different places and I hope to continue doing that and just, you know, we live in a very fairly utopic town, Telluride, Colorado, and it's an amazing place, an incredible community for kids to grow up in, but they need to see and experience cultures outside of that particular culture and outside of the United States because I don't think our way is the end all answer to a fulfilling life.

• 1:07:04Rich Roll?

  And it's sort of your... Answer to, or your version of these five week boat trips that you went on as a kid, right?

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Rich Roll?

  It's your, it's your way of providing that for your boys.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, that adventure, that unknown, risk-taking, fear. I mean, I remember distinctly in Nepal, coming into this village, right at the time when all the kids were getting out of school, you know, and they're all different ages. And my kids' eyes are just like, oh, my gosh, they've never seen anything like this. And they proceeded to spend like four hours playing tag with 50 kids from this village. And none of them could communicate, but they're just, oh, my God, they had the best time ever. And running around and just getting dirty and, you know, watching our dinner, which

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  was, you know, this local goat get slaughtered and cut up and put on the table and just, it was really, I mean, they talk about it a lot still, of just like, remember those kids and how, you know, it was, it made a huge impression on them. And I guess that is somehow how I reconcile it. It's often, it's really hard for me. If you can imagine being on an expedition like Burma, for example, where you are just out there for weeks and weeks on end, and then you come back to mirrors where you can see yourself. I mean, I didn't have a shower for over a month.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  And running water and these, these little things that come back into your world slowly. And you just have this recognition of them and this appreciation of it. And of course, you know, then you're back in the States and six months later, you forget about it. But at the time, it's really

• 1:09:00Rich Roll?

  It takes six months to forget about it?

• 1:09:02Speaker 00

  I mean, I remember first walking into this hotel and having a huge buffet of food. And we'd been living off of white rice, three meals, two meals a day for two weeks. And I couldn't, I couldn't engage. I couldn't, I just wanted more white rice. I didn't know how to.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Engage back into that world.

• 1:09:23Rich Roll?

  It's like the homeless person that you provide a bed and then they end up sleeping on the floor.

• 1:09:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  Because there's an acclimation period that has to take place. Yeah, it's interesting. As a mom, you know, what sort of sets you apart from your fellow climbers beyond the fact that you've done these extraordinary things and you're a woman is that you are a mom, right? And so that makes it heightened, you know, when you decide like, okay, I'm going to do this expedition. I mean, you did an expedition when your boy was 10 months old, right? And so that's a very, I would imagine, a difficult decision to make. And I would imagine also plays into how you assess risk now, right?

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  So how does that work for you? Like, and it kind of goes back to the balance question, right? Like, this is who you are. Like, to repress that because you're a mom, that would be to kind of contravene your blueprint, so to speak. Yet it's undeniable that, you know, children need their mother and obviously you don't want to go take undue risk. So how does that like interplay is very complicated, it sounds like, to figure that out, right?

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  I mean, that particular time in my life, that particular expedition, I mean, I was a complete crazy person on that trip to Pakistan. But I was so, so terrified of not picking up that part of my life. And I think part of that goes back to my own childhood again and having an amazing mom who stayed at home and drove us, drove me to all those damn basketball games all over the place. And but also had this huge...

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  She didn't have her own identity in the sense that once we were all gone, she, you know, she had a really hard time. And she talked about a lot of her regrets. You know, I was the youngest child, so I basically spent my whole high school home. You know, I was the only kid. And it was hard for her and it really left an impression on me of like, oh, my God, I have to keep my own identity. I have to keep my own identity.

• 1:11:43Rich Roll?

  Right. It was just, it got sublimated into the family equation, right? Like, she wasn't able to express herself.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. And just, yeah, and just always talked about all these things she wanted to do, but was never, I mean, she came from, you know, a small family that lived on Orcas Island with like five kids in her high school. And so in her trajectory of life, she made a lot of changes and did a lot of crazy adventures, but just very different. And it just stuck with me that I had to keep this identity. I had to keep myself because I thought that would be a better way to be a better mom and to have my kids see me as a, as a person.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And, and they're probably old enough now where they can understand what it is that you do, right? Like, so what is it? What do they think? What do they say?

• 1:12:38Speaker 00

  I mean, they think it's great, you know? Someone asked me the other day if my kids have ever asked me to stop and

• 1:12:45Rich Roll?

  Stay home, don't go mom.

• 1:12:45Speaker 00

  Just stay home, don't go mom. And no, you know, they never have. Like, this is, um, the way they are in our family and in my life, it's normal to them what I do. And they love it and they think it's great, you know? And I try to like incorporate it by going to their schools and talking about things. And, you know, they've, they've been to some of these National Geographic live shows and they get it. I mean, they, you know, they hiked into Makaloo Base Camp with me. And instead, you know, they get out the globe and they're like, we want to go here next. We want to see this. Or I have a friend at school that's from Australia and when can we go there?

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  And so they have a, almost the opposite reaction versus, you know, no, mom, don't go. It's like, when, we want to go with you. Where are we going to go? So, but I didn't know that at the time. Like, I didn't know how, following this path.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  As a mother, and when my kids were young, I didn't know how it was gonna turn out. And it was pretty terrifying for me. I was like, what, you know, what if I'm doing permanent damage to my kids, or they hate me, or, you know, I mean, I think every parent has that fear.

• 1:14:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, every parent, I mean, everything you do, you think you're doing that, you know, and, and, you know, whatever, whatever we're doing, we're, we're making mistake, we're all making mistakes, right? Like, nobody's doing this perfectly. But I think just the fact that you have that impulse means you're conscious of that, that you're aware of that, which probably means that you're a good parent. You know what I mean? It's the person who doesn't think about that kind of thing that I would, I would worry about. But I think what's interesting about that, what you just said, is, you know, a conservative traditionalist perspective would be, look, you know, you've had your good times, Hillary, it's time to like, be a mom, you can't do all those crazy things, you have your priority, you gotta do, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But I think the, the alternative

• 1:14:41Rich Roll?

  perspective, and the perspective that I would share and offer, is that there's something incredibly powerful and empowering about a parental figure, or anyone for that matter, who is so, uh, whose, whose life is so consistent with their dharma. Like, you are, you are being who you are, right? Unapologetically, in a very fierce and, and strong way.

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  Well, but it's taken me a long time to get to that, for sure.

• 1:15:09Rich Roll?

  Sure, of course. I know. Come on, Pete, you gotta be quiet, because I'm gonna pay these guys. But, but that is a powerful example for a child to see, hey, my mom's a badass. Like, she, all these people are telling her, you shouldn't do this, shouldn't do that, and she does it anyway, and she kicks ass. And, and she, she's not gonna apologize for who she is, you know? And there's something like, so, so life-affirming about that, you know, that, and, and, you know, even at a young age, like, they get that, you know, they get that. Like, you've met obstacles, you've overcome them, or, or even when, you know, you don't reach the, you don't reach the peaks of the, whatever, you tried, you know, you put yourself out there.

• 1:15:50Rich Roll?

  And I think as much as anything, that is a message that is important for kids to see, like to say, yeah, I have this other thing I want to do. And like, if she can go and do that, then like, maybe I can go and do this.

• 1:16:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  Right? Whatever that is, it will be, you know, different from you. But I think that, you know, we'd probably be better off with more, more people who, you know, lived boldly in that regard. And of course, it comes with its risks, right?

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:20Rich Roll?

  But what would you do if one of your kids was like, I just want to play video games? You know, it's like, are you go Burma? No, like, I'm staying here and I'm going to be a video game guy. Like, if it was just, you know, it's like that.

• 1:16:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:33Rich Roll?

  It's like.

• 1:16:33Speaker 00

  I mean, I do worry about that. They really love their video games.

• 1:16:36Rich Roll?

  Our kids are our greatest teachers, right?

• 1:16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  And it's like, oh, my kids are going to be, they're going to love the things that I love. And, you know, inevitably, it's not, it's wired to not be that way, so that you have that tension, right? And there's something to be learned from that.

• 1:16:48Speaker 00

  Right. And I see that even in my own childhood and growing up and how I like.

• 1:16:52Rich Roll?

  So you with your dad, right?

• 1:16:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. You rebound a different direction. And I mean, that is the point of a parent.

• 1:16:59Rich Roll?

  You live in Telluride. If you have a kid who's like, I don't want to ski. I don't, I hate the snow. I want to live in Hawaii or whatever.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  I mean, unfortunately, fortunately, like, I have plenty of friends in Telluride whose kids are like that. And, you know, it takes some getting used to, but, you know, they're interested in other things. And again, I just, it makes me go back to, hopefully, it's not video games, but like, I want my kids just to be passionate about something, you know, about something, just to have some emotional attachment that gives them a north, as you said, gives them that is a compass in their life, gives them something to wake

• 1:17:45Speaker 00

  up in the morning for. And hopefully, because what I know what that compass is for me is just wilderness and snow. You know, hopefully, I would love it if that was a part of their life, but it doesn't need to be.

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  All of their life.

• 1:18:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:07Speaker 00

  But, you know.

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, well, maybe that's some, some growth.

• 1:18:13Rich Roll?

  Like, you're not going to be your dad, right?

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:18:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Speaker 00

  And they're not going to be me, and they're not going to be their dad.

• 1:18:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly, right. Well, more will be revealed.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:18:23Rich Roll?

  I suppose, right?

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  I suppose. I mean, you have kids, too, like.

• 1:18:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's like, you know, they, they, you, you think it's going to be one way, and then it's a different way.

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  And it's like, how do you flow with that?

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:18:36Rich Roll?

  And how do you love and support them when they have interests that are in things that like you wouldn't be interested in?

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:18:41Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:18:42Rich Roll?

  Like, it's, that's all part of it.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  And in some ways, it's been really... I mean, I think it's one of the most amazing aspects of being a parent, is having these little minds that see things for the first time and remind me to not be so jaded and to, to see things through their eyes. And it sounds totally cliche, but it is. It's, that's the amazing part about being a parent is like, oh, yeah, like,

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  it, this is an amazing thing, like, and, and notice the little things that affect their day or make them, you know, that it's...

• 1:19:19Rich Roll?

  To, I have a friend, Rob Bell, and he says that, you know, we all need to live our lives with a little bit more awe and wonder.

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:19:27Rich Roll?

  And kids wake up in the morning with awe and wonder.

• 1:19:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:19:30Rich Roll?

  And we lose that.

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  We lose it, yeah.

• 1:19:33Rich Roll?

  And, you know, living an adventurous life like you do, there's a lot of awe and wonder, I would, I would imagine, right?

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think that's as much of what I'm passionate about as anything.

• 1:19:45Rich Roll?

  What do you think people don't understand about what you do? Like, if, if people have some misapprehension, or they don't really get, like, what is this ski mountaineering thing? Like, what is, what is it that you wish they understood that you understand about it?

• 1:20:04Rich Roll?

  Or just adventure in general?

• 1:20:05Speaker 00

  I mean, I think I would like people to understand that there's so much more to it than the summit at the end of the day. The most I've taken, what this adventuring has given me is the capacity to be present. I wish I could take that ability to be present into my day to day life at home, but it's just really hard for me. But on an expedition, and when you're in these intense situations, you're really focused on one step in front of the other.

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  Your whole world is about shelter, water, food, survival. And it's this incredibly simplistic and powerful experience that we've gotten so far away from. And really, that is what keeps me going back and keeps me wanting to have these new adventures. And then, of course, there's just, you know, that, all that path along the way of, take one expedition I did to the Isle of South Georgia, where it's where Shackleton was finally rescued. And he, and on that, in order to get from the boat to the mountains,

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  you had to walk through 300,000 penguins and elephant seals. And half the time, we'd never even get to the mountain because we'd just stop and sit down and hang out with this crazy wildlife scene that would unfold in front of us. And like, that's the stuff I take away from it, is having those experiences.

• 1:21:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So when you think back on like Burma, it's probably not, you know, like the last day before you retreated, it's somewhere along the trail when the motorcycle wiped out or, you know.

• 1:22:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. Stepping on the snake.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  It's, yeah, it's the journey and the obstacles faced that give it value for you.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, and.

• 1:22:18Speaker 00

  The thing about Burma is it is, it's the human dynamic as well. Getting to know myself, you get to know other people really quickly.

• 1:22:27Rich Roll?

  Super connected with other people.

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  But I wasn't, like, I saw the worst side of myself on that trip as well. And I saw, you know, really worse sides of, we all, it was so raw and we were so strung out that we all lost it at one point or another. And the beauty of it was that if somebody lost it, the rest would kind of come in to rally and pick up the slack. And, and as a unit, we were able to all get out of there alive, which I had my doubts along the way. And, yeah, so I saw a really ugly side of myself on that trip.

• 1:23:06Speaker 00

  And to know that I'm capable of that, as well as the good stuff, is pretty enlightening in some way.

• 1:23:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Does it make you feel less judgmental of others? Or does it like deepen that reservoir of empathy, you know, for other people?

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  It definitely deepens the reservoir of empathy. And I've definitely had a lot of pedestals that I've stood on in my twenties and thirties and pretty much been knocked off of all of those.

• 1:23:44Rich Roll?

  Humility.

• 1:23:45Speaker 00

  So humility, empathy.

• 1:23:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, definitely. I've learned to be less judgmental and understand that everyone has their own history that they're bringing into a situation. So.

• 1:24:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I mean, the simplicity really is kind of what you were talking about earlier. Like, just if we can just simplify our lives, you know, we, we so overcomplicate everything unnecessarily. And it's interesting that you go and you're so in touch with that when you're on these expeditions and that even you, who's gone out and done things, you know, The vast majority of people will never ever do. It wears off when you come back.

• 1:24:30Speaker 00

  It does. It wears off.

• 1:24:32Rich Roll?

  It's like, why can't it stick? Why can't it, you know?

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I'm just as addicted to my Instagram feed or whatever as the next person, but yet

• 1:24:42Rich Roll?

  It seems like-

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  That's what I love about being in the mountains is like the phone is, nothing's ringing, nothing's like-

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  In India, they won't let you bring the sat phone either, too.

• 1:24:50Speaker 00

  They won't let you bring the sat phone.

• 1:24:51Rich Roll?

  Is that still the law there? That's so crazy.

• 1:24:53Speaker 00

  They're working on changing it, but I did, I got a nice like-

• 1:24:56Rich Roll?

  You snuck it in, right?

• 1:24:57Speaker 00

  I snuck it in in 2013. Fortunately, because one of our team members got pulmonary D man, so we had to call in a rescue, but-

• 1:25:03Rich Roll?

  But you had to call like somebody in Italy, right? You couldn't call anyone in India because you'd get arrested for having the phone.

• 1:25:09Speaker 00

  Well, I got arrested for having the phone anyways. Yeah, but they wouldn't answer the phone because they can recognize a sat number. So we had to call through Italy and then Italy called.

• 1:25:18Rich Roll?

  What's the deal with that? Like, why won't they?

• 1:25:20Speaker 00

  You know, because especially the region we're in is very close to, there's a lot of drug smuggling and they're just afraid of, you know, terrorism and all of that. But there's, they're working on it. There's definitely ways to figure out how you can-

• 1:25:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, like, life hangs in the balance- On something like that, like they could register them somehow.

• 1:25:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, they register them or you rent them. They have the, an international, or an Indian mountaineering federation there, so, you know, give phones to that federation and then you rent them from the mountaineering federation there. They're working on it. It would be an easy fix, but there's a lot of red tape in India.

• 1:26:01Rich Roll?

  But back to that, that earlier point, you know, it's so beautiful how you describe like being in these communities and seeing the kids and they're happy and they're living in, you know, like they have nothing, you know? And, and there's joy.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:26:15Rich Roll?

  And so we intellectualize that and we understand like, oh, those people are happy. And then you, you go to, you know, Bakersfield and you're like, yeah, people don't look as happy, wherever it is, doesn't matter. Wherever. But we're not like going, well, I'm going to sell everything and like move and go live with them.

• 1:26:32Speaker 00

  And I'm incredibly like romanticizing it too. I mean, these kids have-

• 1:26:36Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be incredibly hard.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  It's, it's hard lives and they don't have long life expectancies and, you know, they have, they don't have healthcare and, I mean, it's a hard, it's, it's a hard life. And I think-

• 1:26:53Speaker 00

  We're not going to go backwards as a society to that degree. And hopefully, you know, the goal of humanity is to uplift everyone out of that poverty. But we have to find value in different things, I think.

• 1:27:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, can we, can we capture some aspect of, of, you know, where that joy is coming from? And bring that into our own lives? And, and we're not so good at that.

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:27:26Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:27:27Speaker 00

  No, we do like complicating things.

• 1:27:29Rich Roll?

  We have to, how long, oh, an hour and a half? We have a few more minutes here. So you're speaking tonight.

• 1:27:38Speaker 00

  Speaking tonight, yes, about Burma.

• 1:27:40Rich Roll?

  I know, so I'm sort of like wishing that I could have seen you talk before we do. Bring a little bit more color into this. When you get up and, and you deliver these presentations, like you're telling the stories. But what is it that you want people to walk away with? Like, what is the message that you're trying to deliver?

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  I want people to,

• 1:28:08Speaker 00

  I mean, be inspired on one level, but also to embrace

• 1:28:17Speaker 00

  risk-taking and failure, which sounds like two kind of depressing things, but like embrace these things. Because I think it opens up your, this little box that we live in. And

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  it opens up your ability to get to know yourself and your true potential through taking risks and through failing. And I mean, basically, that's what this whole expedition, this Burma talk is about is we took a huge risk and we failed on many levels, but you know, we also succeeded because we're all still here and.

• 1:28:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What is your metric for success and failure?

• 1:29:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:29:01Rich Roll?

  You know, still, I struggle with this word failure. It's like, there's the attempt to, you know, live and do something outside of your comfort zone.

• 1:29:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:29:11Rich Roll?

  And that should be celebrated, no matter what the outcome. Because, you know, upon your return, you're fortified with whatever you learned. You know, you have the experience. And then there's, you know, whatever that experience delivered to you in terms of how you can, you know, live more, fulfill, live better, give more of yourself to others.

• 1:29:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33Rich Roll?

  So what we get hung up on this word failure is, oh, well, you guys didn't make it to the summit. You failed.

• 1:29:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  It's such a reductionist.

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  And not one single person has ever said that to me.

• 1:29:43Rich Roll?

  Not.

• 1:29:44Speaker 00

  No, they're all like, what are you talking about? That wasn't a failure. That was amazing, you know, or like, what an adventure.

• 1:29:50Rich Roll?

  You don't look at it as a failure, do you? Or do you struggle with that?

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  I mean, I did for a while afterwards, not so much because of reaching, not reaching the summit, but just because of how our team dynamics just imploded on that ridge. And I felt, you know, as, you know, I was supposed to be the glue for this team. And I think I just learned a lot about how not to lead, how to lead, how, just the intricacies and, you know, sort of difficulties. And in the end, though, I always go back to like, damn it, we signed up for an adventure and that's what we had. So what is all this about? Like, that's what we got. We got what we wanted.

• 1:30:35Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:30:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:36Speaker 00

  Buck up and like, deal.

• 1:30:40Rich Roll?

  You hear often, or I've, I've heard often, you know, this refrain that there are no great female role models. It's like, we're in the Kardashian culture. And as a father of two young girls, I take issue with that. There are amazing. Women role models all over the place, but we just don't do a very good job of celebrating them or making sure that they're in the spotlight because there's people like yourself that are, you know, doing amazing things everywhere. So how do you think about like your role as, as, you know, as a, as a woman, as a female role model to, you know, young girls as somebody, you know, that they can look up to? Do you, do you spend

• 1:31:25Rich Roll?

  time thinking about that or you're just doing what you're doing?

• 1:31:28Speaker 00

  I do more and more. I mean, if you look up like female explorers on the great wide web.

• 1:31:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Are you the first Google person?

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  No, you get Dora the Explorer. You know, it's like, come on. Like, so I think it's,

• 1:31:48Speaker 00

  so more and more, I really do think about

• 1:31:54Speaker 00

  what it means to be a role model for young girls. And

• 1:32:00Speaker 00

  there are so many role models out there. And really, it's just a matter of,

• 1:32:08Speaker 00

  you know, I think in a lot of ways, women are, you can correct me if you don't agree, but somewhat superior storytellers, especially in terms of adventure, because we talk about it so differently than

• 1:32:21Rich Roll?

  You're the keepers of the flame.

• 1:32:22Speaker 00

  The male story. And

• 1:32:26Rich Roll?

  I agree with that.

• 1:32:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's especially when it comes to like adventure and climbing and, and in that genre, we, I feel like women speak about it very differently than men and, and have an incredibly different, unique perspective.

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  What's an example of that?

• 1:32:42Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, just in us talking right now, and granted, you're asking the questions, but we're not talking about

• 1:32:55Speaker 00

  The peak of evil and climbing and standing on the top and how many summits I've made and this, that and the other. We're talking about-

• 1:33:00Rich Roll?

  I don't care about that.

• 1:33:01Speaker 00

  Kids, I know, but you know, it's just like you're talking about these stories of just more, just emotional.

• 1:33:08Rich Roll?

  What does it mean?

• 1:33:09Speaker 00

  What does it mean? What is the point? And I think you're seeing the sprouting up of a lot of female adventure writers as well as adventurists. And I think that through speaking, for me, I can affect girls and their idea of what it means to be a woman in the workplace, a woman in adventure, a role model, what it means to occupy a space that is typically male dominated and how to still take on that

• 1:33:53Speaker 00

  space, but be a woman and be a female and understand that there's huge value in that because of the different perspective you have. And yeah, I guess did that answer your question?

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  No, it's good. It's powerful. No, I mean, that's, that's the heart of it.

• 1:34:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:11Rich Roll?

  That's the heart of it. And you know, it's, we're talking about the perils of the modern world and you know, like I said, I have two daughters. It's like, I see the influences and as much as you try to guide and, and you know, kind of like insulate them from some of that, it's impossible.

• 1:34:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  It's there. It is, you know, it is omnipresent in our culture and you have to work to kind of get outside of that.

• 1:34:38Speaker 00

  Right. And so I think like you can do that with like even the companies I work with that North Face, for example, you know, they need to be able to represent their female athletes in the same way and with the same push as the males. And they're working really hard at doing that. And I think that's how you get-

• 1:35:05Speaker 00

  Female role models out there so that when you hit Explorer, you don't get Dora, you get Lynn Hill and you get Angel Collinson and Margot and Ashima and all of these incredible women out there doing incredible things.

• 1:35:24Rich Roll?

  And I pay attention more than most people and I don't know who those people are.

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:35:28Rich Roll?

  And I feel guilty like I should, right?

• 1:35:31Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:35:32Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:35:33Speaker 00

  They're just climbers and ski people.

• 1:35:34Rich Roll?

  I know, but it's cool. It's cool. Well, we gotta wrap this up, but that was awesome. How do you feel? Do we do it? What did we not talk about? Is there more stuff we need to talk about?

• 1:35:46Speaker 00

  My head's spinning.

• 1:35:49Rich Roll?

  Very inspiring. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming, but also, but more than that, like, thank you for what you do. Thank you for, you know, being this example. And, uh, and I just want more people to hear your voice and I want you to continue doing what you're doing. Do you have a sense of what your next adventure may be? Or is that percolating?

• 1:36:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I, um, I'm going to spend a few weeks with Jim Morrison, my partner in life and all things, and do some climbing in the Sierras, sort of as a training platform for going back up to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It's one of like my favorite places on this entire planet. I've never been anywhere like it. And as you know, there's a lot of political and environmental stuff going on up there. So I'm gonna spend a couple of weeks up there with another athlete, Kit DeLaurier, at the end of April.

• 1:36:48Rich Roll?

  Very cool.

• 1:36:48Speaker 00

  And explore and sort of document what a beautiful, unique place it is in hopes of influencing.

• 1:36:59Speaker 00

  Some policy.

• 1:37:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:01Speaker 00

  Or something.

• 1:37:01Rich Roll?

  We could use a little bit of that.

• 1:37:02Speaker 00

  We could use some of that.

• 1:37:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, that's, that's the next podcast.

• 1:37:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  And get into that.

• 1:37:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Rich Roll?

  Well, that's very cool. And you're kind of on this, this speaking tour.

• 1:37:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:37:11Rich Roll?

  Of sorts at the moment. I mean, the theater you're speaking at, it's a Thousand Oaks Civic.

• 1:37:16Speaker 00

  Civic Arts Center.

• 1:37:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful theater.

• 1:37:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:19Rich Roll?

  It's big.

• 1:37:19Speaker 00

  That's one of the coolest parts of touring is.

• 1:37:21Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's a big theater.

• 1:37:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:22Rich Roll?

  You know? So how many, do you have more cities coming up? Like where?

• 1:37:27Speaker 00

  Um, I'm kind of done for the season. I just have one more at the Mesa Arts Center, I think, in Mesa, Arizona.

• 1:37:34Rich Roll?

  Phoenix. Yeah, yeah, cool. I've been in that theater too. That's nice.

• 1:37:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Rich Roll?

  Those are good theaters. Those are good venues.

• 1:37:40Speaker 00

  Really good theaters. The Seattle Theater, the Winnebago was in there. That was a really good theater.

• 1:37:45Rich Roll?

  Awesome.

• 1:37:45Speaker 00

  One in Kansas City was incredible. There's some good ones. Pro Theater in Dallas.

• 1:37:50Rich Roll?

  And this is all like a Nat Geo thing, National Geographic thing, right?

• 1:37:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, they have this National Geographic live series, so different cities host anywhere from three to five shows in a season and you can, you buy like season's passes for it. It's pretty cool. It's cool. They usually do it in the winter, you know, when it's dark and cold and.

• 1:38:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Speaker 00

  People can go listen to good stories.

• 1:38:13Rich Roll?

  Awesome.

• 1:38:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14Rich Roll?

  Well, good luck tonight.

• 1:38:15Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:38:15Rich Roll?

  And good luck, luck to you in life in general.

• 1:38:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, thanks. Same to you.

• 1:38:19Rich Roll?

  All right. So if people want to, want to connect with Hillary, first of all, final question. Is it still Hillary O'Neill or is it Hillary Nelson now?

• 1:38:28Speaker 00

  Hillary Nelson.

• 1:38:29Rich Roll?

  Hillary Nelson. Okay, good. I'm glad I asked you that.

• 1:38:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:32Rich Roll?

  But it's, it's still.

• 1:38:33Speaker 00

  It's transitioning, so.

• 1:38:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're like Hillary O'Neill on Twitter and.

• 1:38:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:37Rich Roll?

  I could tell, like, your website's Hillary Nelson now.

• 1:38:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, some kind of Hillary Nelson O'Neill, but it's transitioning to Hillary Nelson.

• 1:38:44Rich Roll?

  I got you. Cool.

• 1:38:46Speaker 00

  My maiden name from my.

• 1:38:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:38:49Speaker 00

  Divorced.

• 1:38:49Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:38:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:38:51Rich Roll?

  All right, well, cool. After your next expedition, come back and talk to me about it some more, maybe?

• 1:38:56Speaker 00

  All right.

• 1:38:57Rich Roll?

  All right, cool.

• 1:38:57Speaker 00

  Sounds good.

• 1:38:57Rich Roll?

  Thanks.

• 1:38:58Speaker 00

  Thanks. Thanks for having me.

• 1:38:59Rich Roll?

  Thank you.