01x12 - Ed Viesturs and the Mountaintop

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superheroes often travel

great lengths endure the harshest

conditions

and conquer the unconquerable

yep it can seem like a stuff of fantasy

but in reality

superheroes are around us every day and

if you have any doubt you clearly have

never met my pal

at easter's edge climb to the very top

of the world

i mean the very top of the world many

many times

but more importantly he's returned to

tell the tale he's lived the type of

stories that most of us

well we've only dreamed about it's not

the type of storytelling i'm used to but

a good story

it's worth a little adventure no no come

back here

i'm joe quesada i tell stories for a

living welcome

to marvel storyboards

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[Applause]

Story

sun valley idaho a peaceful town

surrounded by

daunting geeks it's no wonder ed calls

this place home

ed is one of the world's most elite and

legendary mountain climbers

in fact he's the only american to have

climbed all 14

of the world's tallest peaks but that's

just where his story begins

as a master storyteller ed travels the

world with gailing audiences with

tales of his superheroic feats climbing

has to be a round

but today ed's invited me into his home

so we can prepare for a

day on the mountain ed how are you sir

joe sir thank you so much

for your legendary edmund sir so so

we're gonna have some fun today right

yeah yeah we're gonna go for a little

hike

we had some snow last night right it's

nice and cold we're in your garage in

the world of marvel when i hear the

garage i think

i think of tony stark right

the great scientist the guy is iron man

and he's got his

suits everywhere so this is kind of like

your hall of armor wouldn't it be

yeah this is all expedition gear old

gear new gear

i don't hike i don't like the cold right

i'm from new york

what would i what would i need i thought

we would start

with a down suit blue might be nice for

you

get your right foot right there there

you go easy and pop that on

it's just like a space suit that looks

perfect

you just kind of dig in as you're

climbing so they're kind of like close

like they're kind of like claws for the

comic fans out there

very similar to wolverine's clothes

this is like our basic tool which we

never leave without

this is the legendary eye socks yeah

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so this is what i need to do our hike

today or well i think it's a little

overkill

i don't think you need all that

i see photos of you on those ridges

and i get queasy yeah and i can't

imagine like myself just being up there

and like not just like

oh yeah and passing out how do you

prepare your

your body because i mean a lot of stuff

happens up there your body goes through

a lot like a basically breaks down

doesn't it

absolutely the higher you go your body

actually starts deteriorating

and most people that climb everest use

oxygen by removing the mask i'm actually

experiencing it my face is in the moment

but you can imagine the higher you go by

the time we put camp 4

in it's at 26 000 feet we've lost 15 or

20 pounds

the majority in my opinion of the risk

is

the decision making in my stories it's

easy to go back and fix mistakes

but in ed's there is zero room for error

so ed where are we going we're gonna try

to climb up

griffin's view really yeah why not

it's about 8 700 feet

let's go have a little workout

okay so this is the approach and now

we're gonna start

gaining some altitude

you have the snack like a lot of the

great mountaineers do sort of

reading the mountain well i call it

listening to the mountain

what are those clouds over there going

to do in a few hours is a storm

brewing is the snow stable enough

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when you start at base camp is there

excitement trepidation and what happens

on the stage is up at base camp you're

you're miles and miles and days and days

and thousands and thousands of feet from

the summit so you have to

it becomes overwhelming if you think how

am i going to get all the way there so

you got to break it down

into days into steps into minutes in the

breasts

because you're going to 29 000 feet

it's absolutely super humid to imagine

that stuff so can we go a little further

i think yeah let's go let's see what we

can do

going to the top

i can see it yeah see that

you name it mount casada that's a

little too self ingrandizing for me

oh no no no no no come back

man it's a summit well

yeah i'm not doing that no why aren't

you out of breath

all right ed i'm gonna let you guide me

back down okay if you hear a scream

jump out of the way because i'm heading

down in a much more rapid fashion

Interview

one of my favorite characters at marvel

is a character called daredevil and and

daredevil is known as the man without

fear

listening to your adventures it seems

like you are a man without fear if

there's anything scary

yeah i don't think i'm fearless yeah

being fearless means you just keep going

and going and going

in spite of the consequences avalanches

scare the hell out of me

storms there's all these things that we

can't control up there

so i think fear is good i don't want to

say i'm daredevil there's fear

that keeps you alive

so what's your origin story you know i

grew up in illinois but i loved

adventure when i was a little kid we

we had a creek out our back door and i

pretended to go on

expeditions and the one book that i read

that

basically changed my life was annapurna

1950 the story of the french team that

go to annapurna

and three months into it two of them get

to the summit

you know and to me that was like wow

everybody's working together

but only two people go to the summit and

that was my

vision of how an expedition operates as

a team

because of that story i was inspired to

say

that's what i want to do so you had a

distinct inciting incident in your story

but it wasn't the first peak you

conquered in the himalayas

even then your mindset is i want to go

to everest

my first expedition to the himalayan did

you succeed on that one we turned around

300 feet from the summit

i k*lled it so explain that to me

exactly yeah that's still two hours of

climbing

the storm was developing and so we

listened to the mountain and that's that

was the end of the trip i find that

story is so

amazing that you like you can see it

yeah can't touch it you have to think

long term versus short term you've had

some amazing adventures but i mean i

know that there was

one tragic moment in particular right

which is 96 on everest

yeah well we were there doing the imax

film

i was there with david beshears who was

a climber became filmmaker so he was

directing

and filming and i was the leader of our

particular expedition so wherever we

went the camera crew

david and his partner filmed whatever we

did and there at the same time were

my two good friends rob hall of new

zealand leading his

clients and my good friend scott fisher

leading his clients

and on a day that we kind of opted not

to go to the summit

they decided to go and instead of

turning around when certain

time constraints were hit or when oxygen

was running low

they kind of kept going to the summit

and on a good day i believe they would

have gotten away with it but a big storm

slammed into the summit that day and

they were caught off guard

and eight people died these were good

friends of ours

and we were helpless in saving them so

it was

a huge emotional moment for everybody

you know you become a community on the

mountain and these were two of my best

friends

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a perna that was like your great white

whale wasn't it

if you're climbing all 14 8 000 meter

peaks annapurna

is on the list during my career i'd

already attempted annapurna twice

and both of those times my partners and

i

we just walked away because of the

danger avalanches and

uncontrolled risk and in the end

i then climbed 13 and annapurna then

happened to be

still the last one i almost convinced

myself not to go back

and ultimately i decided that i would we

would sit at the bottom and listen to

the mountain

it would tell us yeah and if conditions

were just as bad as they were the first

two times

i can i promised everybody we'd go home

and it was colder that year the mountain

was glued together

and it was almost like we're here at the

right time yeah we're gonna go

this is our moment

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but i tempered my my joy when we were on

the summit

it's not over until we're down and once

we got down

all the way to base camp two days later

our friends were waiting for us

they had beer now i'm done yeah and it

was one of the

the highlights of my life to have done

something that took 18 years

was that your final your final 8 000

climb or did you i thought it might be

but then uh

four years after that i went back to

everest just for the heck of it

i thought at that time this will be my

last trip and now i can say goodbye to

everest

and i could save her every moment and

then walk away

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what do you love about storytelling and

is there a better metaphor

than climbing a mountain i think

mountains are an amazing metaphor i've

discovered that

people that hear me they come up to me

they go i listen to you i saw your story

you've changed my life you've changed my

ideas about what's possible and that's

what i get out of it

inspiring people with my stories we all

have our own annapurna

an annapurna it can be a goal

a physical disability a challenge that

you

choose or something that you're

confronted with and that becomes your

annapurna

right and how do you how do you climb to

the top of that

and i i hope that's inspirational to

people

i want to thank you for your generosity

and uh i'll see you on the hill

yeah maybe tomorrow okay

while spending the day with ed is

absolutely the closest i'll ever get to

everest

my takeaway was almost as valuable ed

reminded me

that the very best stories inspire us to

go out and

make our own so we can inspire others to

climb their own mountains

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