Climbing Mount Everest with John Beede

2 Cent Dad Podcast

John Beede, a legendary mountain climber (and dad) joins me on the podcast to talk about his journey up Mount Everest and the discoveries made during the journey that influence young men today.

Where to find John:

• Warrior Challenge Books
• John’s YouTube Channel
• John on Twitter

Transcription below (May contain typos...)

[00:03:00] [00:02:00] [00:01:00] [00:00:00]Mike: [00:03:34] on the podcast, we have a mountain climber, a Mount Everest summiting mountain climber. John BD is on the two set dad podcast today. I'm super excited to talk to you and hear your stories, John.

Thanks for being on, man. Mike

John: [00:03:48] also happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. And I

Mike: [00:03:51] know you've got an upcoming book coming out called the warrior challenge, you know, eight steps for 'em. Becoming a true warrior that's, that's aimed at, young [00:04:00] boys. And, yeah, but, and we've talked about that a little bit, but I'm just excited to hear some stories, man, that, you know, you've done quite a bit.

And, you know, maybe, maybe give a little background for, for the listeners on, on how you came to, to climb Mount Everest.

John: [00:04:13] Sure. So not only Everest, but I've climbed the tallest mountain on every continent have traveled to, I think it's at 67 countries now. It's an only, so often it actually kind of like sit down and add them up.

and I've been kite surfing on every major ocean. so I've had some adventures that's for sure not to, to fund all of this. I've been giving professional keynote speeches to now call almost like just short of 1 million live audience members in 48 States, six continents or six countries on six continents.

So that's my. That's who I am. That's

Mike: [00:04:47] awesome. That's amazing. I knew some of those facts that I was gonna say those before the interview started. I'm like, I'm probably going to miss a few anyways. So I see John get, fill in the gap. Oh

John: [00:04:57] good. There you go. There you go. That's it.

[00:05:00] Mike: [00:05:00] So w which was the first mountain you climb?

Tell me about like, take me back to how you got started doing this man and like,

John: [00:05:07] Oh, okay. So I was a boy scout. Eagle scout and would teach rock climbing, you know, just up 30, 40 foot tiny walls in Washington state. where I went to the summer camp in 2004, my buddy rings me up and says, I'm in university now.

And he's like, Hey, if you want, I'm going to climb the grand Teton. Do you want to go with me? And we were dirt bag. Poor had no money, had no equipment. And we're like, yeah, sure. And I'm thinking like, I'm an instructor I've got, there's no problem. So we, we roll up, we get to the trail head at 10:00 PM and we don't, we can't afford a tent.

So we decided we're going to do it all in one day. Most people do it in three days. We were like, we're going to just go do it in one shot because tents are too expensive. We don't have. Proper gear. Like we call them, cams and quick draws the equipment [00:06:00] to secure your rope into the cliff. Well, all we had was a rope.

We said, okay, here's the plan? Here's the plan. If one person falls. While that person is falling. The other person needs to jump over a rock so that we pendulum swing and both of us were like, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Well that's how we're going to climb this thing.

Mike: [00:06:21] That's good. Sounds like a plan.

John: [00:06:24] Yeah.

Why not? So like out of complete moron, stupidity, and total disregard for anything safety, somehow we made it up, got back down and like on the way back down word. Somehow got out and people were going, are you to the idiots that were like, did it in one shot and didn't use like any gear? Yeah. That was us thinking.

We're all cool. Yeah. So that was the start of it then I, but the progression forward was the exact same, but with learned lessons on each progressing lead difficult mountain. [00:07:00] So it would start with this like, so totally silly, climb in, in Wyoming. Then I went to South America, climbed the tallest mountain.

There didn't even summit got knocked off, but learned a lot from it. Then I went and took a Denali prep course, went and climbed Denali summited, and learned from it, made a bunch of mistakes and went like that over and over and over until I had made all the mistakes possible that you could make on Everest, but I learned how to overcome them or how to handle it when situations like that came up.

and by the time that I decided, yep, I'm ready. Like, I know everything that, that Mountain's gonna throw to me. I believed I was, I was ready for it. And I was, yeah.

Mike: [00:07:38] Yeah. And tell me about that, that process. You know, I was watching one of the speeches that you gave around, you tell a story about climbing Everest and where you're, I think it's like your jacket turns from like red.

To like w w black and white, you know, and I was like, and you talk about this notion of like Cocker yourself. And so tell me a little bit [00:08:00] about, as you got progressively harder, you know, what, what was going on? It's more than just mountains at that point, right? I mean, you, you know, it's, it's impacting, you know, how you're viewing your own personal identity and then obviously how you're overcoming challenges.

So, so tell me a little bit about how that evolved. And then evolved into, obviously you share that wisdom, you know, in keynote

John: [00:08:21] speeches. Absolutely. So I never understood what my draw was to the mountains, or I couldn't clearly articulate it until I was in my thirties. And what I now know is that it's moving meditation and the process of climbing is not about going up.

Even though literally it is, but more important to me. It's about going in and learning to dig out what I've got inside of me and put myself in progressively more difficult or challenging situations and see how much inner strength I have to draw out. Now. That's like a [00:09:00] cool little, I don't know, you could call it a soundbite, I guess that took a decade of mountaineering work too, to understand.

That's why I love this because. I believe that I was made of more, but didn't have any way to quantify it back in the day of tribal human history, we used to have these, rites of passages where a young man was given. Here's what it takes to protect your tribe. Here's what it takes to be a, a guy who can look after yourself.

And for better or worse, we lost those. I mean, the bad side of it was that those were abusive, trials, but the good side is that gave us the standard of here's, what it means to be a man. And I don't know that we have that any longer, a clear definition of here's, what it takes, here's what you need to do in modern contemporary culture.

And I think that I started climbing so that I could create one of these for myself. did I answer the question or did I,

Mike: [00:09:59] you're getting, you're [00:10:00] getting deeper. I love it early, John. well you said you created it for yourself cause you didn't have it. That's really interesting. And you almost discovered that you didn't, what I'm hearing you say is you'd l...