Transcript
WEBVTT
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Folks welcome back to the ageless athlete podcast.
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This is your host Kush Khandelwal.
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And in today's pod, we visit Yosemite national park with none other than Mr.
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El Capitan.
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Hand flooring himself.
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Hans has repeatedly set and broken.
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One of the most coveted speed records in the world, the nose of El Capitan.
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The most.
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Storied big vol in the world.
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Eight different times.
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In 2012 hands alongside climbing partner, Alex.
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Honnold.
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To good record again in two hours and 23 minutes lowering the previous record by a full 30 minutes.
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Hence also holds numerous other speed records in Yosemite national park.
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And all over the globe.
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Hence also won the first international speed climbing championships in 91.
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And has held the us national title 11 times.
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He won gold at the ESPN X games three years in a row.
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Hans is a pleasure to chat with knowledgeable articulate.
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Get humble and funny in a way only the most successful and grateful amongst us can be.
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Hence shared stories previously untold.
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Including advice on staying healthy.
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Taking on hard challenges, willfully.
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And his reflections on aging gracefully.
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And stay tuned until the end, as we have some exciting giveaways to announce from handsome self.
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As well as the sponsors.
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Coro smartwatches and fizzy vantage nutrition.
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Products.
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Monday Morning, April 1 today but today is not an April fool's day joke.
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We really do have Hans Florine, Mr.
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El Capitan on the show.
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Excited to dive into different topics with Hans.
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Hans is obviously known for.
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Climbing a lifetime in Yosemite.
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Hans, let me begin by just asking you this.
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Is climbing on El Capitan and the nose is a still as captivating to you.
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As the first time you.
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laid your eyes on it.
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Oh yeah.
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I mean, captivating is a great word to use.
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I mean, there's thousands of words to use for El Cap and none of them will really capture unless you're standing there at the base and maybe you have to climb it too, but, I'm up to 177 ascents of the nose, so I'm not the nose, sorry, of El Cap, I've done 26 different routes on El Cap, 117 times on the nose, the others are all the other smattering of roots, I'll point out often, uh, when I'm go around speaking, whether it's a bank or construction company or, you know, REI or, uh, climbing gym, like where, where is Yosemite and why is Yosemite this Mecca where it draws people from around the world?
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And I point out that, you know, 3000 feet is.
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An amazing giant chunk of granite and it's, you know, a mile and a half wide rocks that tall and that big do exist in other places in the world.
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if you go to Baffin Island, you're talking about a float plane or a sailboat or something to get to the base, right?
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If you're talking about, Kazakhstan, you're talking about, a three day trek with Yaks, or if you're daring enough, get into a Russian helicopter, right?
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To get to the base.
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Yosemite.
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you have a 15 minute walk from your car door to the base of the 3000 foot cliff, which is just this combination of wild terrain and crazy easy accessibility, right?
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That those are the two things combined that make El Capitan amazing.
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Huge, gigantic, wild, and it's really accessible, right?
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I named more things there than I wanted to, but just basically, fantastic, big, really accessible.
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It is absolutely.
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a marvel of nature that, there's this beautiful valley that people can drive right into and set their eyes on El Capitan.
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a short walk, if they decide to do that, or if they take their binoculars out, they can actually, actually maybe even with the naked eyes, they can spot people on the climb.
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And, uh, I think that is one huge reason, like you said, like just the approach for all kinds of people, climbers and non climbers alike.
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Yes, I've climbed a bit in Yosemite, but then also taking people out there for the first time and having their faces, uh, light up.
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that is such a pleasing sight.
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talking, of taking people, new people to Yosemite.
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You have taken all kinds of people over the years and taking them up the nose.
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You have taken beginners.
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You have taken adaptive climbers.
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I can only imagine how much work that must be.
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What compels you to put in so much hard work to share this climb with others?
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I think that any guide, or someone who introduces something, an activity to people that are new to it, whether it's, like surfing, you take people out surfing and they're just so psyched and, you know, maybe amazed by your skill, it's really helpful.
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They're just so big, bright eyed, this natural free ride that the waves give them, or it could be kayaking, or it could be rappelling a guide knows this, that, like you're getting to relive how crazy, you know, obsessed you were with climbing those first months and years that you climbed and how, cool it is.
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I mean, for climbers, it's the physical movement.
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You're problem solving with the tip of your fingers to the tip of your toes and using your head.
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And it's also.
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You know, outdoor climbing takes you to places that are amazing.
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Right.
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that's, that's why I say those two different things.
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You know, there's a physical experience of you're using every muscle in your body, a beginner, when they come down, they've been holding on for dear life.
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Right.
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And for that, whatever they can hold on for two to seven minutes to get to the top of a 20 foot wall in a climbing gym, they were thinking about.
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One thing, that wall, how can I get up?
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How can I not maybe die?
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They're so scared and they come down and every muscle in their body is tight.
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And it's kind of this physical meditation, right?
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So that's this one part is the physical.
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And the other is just Taking control of your scene as part of the nature thing.
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Like I want to climb that rock over there, that.
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Mountain or that terrain and I'm going to find a way to get up it.
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So there's this not so much puff your chest out of conquering things.
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I mean, we all know the famous quote from Warren Harding, you know, El Cap look a lot better than me.
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Um, all this to say that, you know, you're getting to venture out into these incredible places and experience incredible places.
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So not pairing up with the same old experience partner on El Cap means I get to see and be part of this.
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Amazing first time with people on El Cap.
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I mean, when you get to the top of the cliff after being on it two days, three days or a long day, and being on it, it's, you see it in people's face and you're reliving it yourself.
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You get all that same energy.
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I experienced the same kind of pleasure when I take people climbing.
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I haven't taken anybody up El Cap but I've taken some new people up some multi pitch routes, single pitch routes and to see their, their reticence and their nervousness and their fear slowly transform into joy.
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and delight.
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That gives me, just so.
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much pleasure.
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It makes me think that whatever I'm doing, has some worth.
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So I just love asking this question and particularly asking you because this is not just a multi pitch climb or a single pitch climb.
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This is taking somebody up, maybe the most iconic rock climb.
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And, uh, yeah, thanks for, uh, introducing this climb to, to so many people.
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Could you just summarize Hans, if you can, because we have listeners to the show who are not all avid rock climbers that obsess over, El Capitan.
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Could you just summarize if it's possible, what does it entail?
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a normal ascent versus some of the ascents you do when you're climbing the nose Really quickly
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you know, if people get to check out pictures and stuff, I'm going to just hold up the book, but we'll put pictures on the post for Instagram and stuff.
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you know, let's for that person that's out there in the world, listen, doesn't, they don't, they're starting at zero.
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Yosemite, El Capitan is in Yosemite.
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Yosemite is in California and Yosemite is about a four hour drive from San Francisco.
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Um, If the listener doesn't know where San Francisco, you can, of course, Google, you can Google El Capitan, of course, but there's the verbal description, right?
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We're in Yosemite Park, which is in California, which is four hours from San Francisco, which is in the United States, the Western Seaboard.
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this wall was first ascended by Warren Harding, um, Wayne Mary and George Whitmore in 1958.
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They spent 33 days, spread out over 18 months, rigging lines on it and got two thirds of the way up.
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And they did a final push of 12 days.
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They were lived eight slept on the wall for 12 days and they made it to the top.
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It's 3000 feet tall.
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And so if you look at the tallest building in New York, it's twice as high as the tallest building in New York.
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Um, the Dubai tower, which is the tallest building in the world, also known as the Burj Khalif, is 2, 550 feet.
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So El Cap is 500 feet taller than or about 500 feet taller than the Bird Khalif.
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Since 1958, people have climbed it in over multiple days.
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The first time it was climbed in a single day was 1975.
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And they coined that as Nose in a Day or NIAD is a big abbreviation a lot of people use.
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This season, 2024, the average party.
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We'll take not two days or three days or four days.
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The average party will fail to climb it.
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That's what's something pretty amazing about is that half the parties or third, the parties that go to the base and try to climb it will back off because it was too hard for them.
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So that makes the average infinite, right?
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But those that succeed still, the average is probably two or three days, three days to climb the route.
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And.
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Nose in a day is commonly done by exceptionally experienced Yosemite climbers.
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Nice,
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Amazing.
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Thank you for Indulging us with that Description that book of yours on the nose.
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Hans,.
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I'll confess It had been sitting on my bookshelf And then our, uh, recording just got scheduled on the last minute and I scrambled to dust it off and start reading it.
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And I have heard you speak and I have seen videos and it's been, present or omnipresent all through my 20 year long climbing career.
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But I started reading it and I was captivated.
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The.
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your story of, of starting of your first trip there and of your first attempt there and the writing as well.
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It, it really is gripping storytelling, whether you are a climber or you're not a climber.
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I think it's a, it's a wonderful book.
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And, uh, I'm 45 percent through as what Kindle tells me.
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And I know that we will finish recording And uh, tonight I'll get back to that book so I can get back to the rest of the story
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And for, hey, your listeners, it's on Audible and iTunes, and you can also download it straight from my house, my uh, my website.
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Yeah.
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and, uh, even more exciting please stay on till the end because we have, uh, some fun giveaways and one of them is going to be a signed copy of the book by Hans himself.
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So, so stay tuned in.
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So moving on, Hans,, one other question that I, I was thinking about when I was reading this book is in the climbing community, we will sometimes go and do these climbing trips with people we have just met.
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I have done that.
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I've looked.
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Found people on mountain project.
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I found people at campsites and have tied in and, uh, and gone on and have had a beautiful adventure to non climbers.
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That sounds, seems kind of ludicrous that we would trust our life, quote unquote, with somebody we don't know very well.
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And I was reading how, I think it was, I forget who, but you have done that on the nose as well.
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you have gone and climbed this.
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3000 foot wall with somebody you may not have known well.
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I want to ask you this.
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So how do you or how do climbers end up trusting somebody they don't know they might have just met and do something like climb 3000 feet of vertical rock
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you know, anyone can, Watch somebody belay someone else at the gym and go, okay, I see they're safe, um, or see that they're not safe.
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And then you could approach them and ask if they want to go outside climbing with you.
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So there's always, you know, interview and test physically.
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I think of it as like, you know, Warren Buffett, he's famous.
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Investor.
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He can probably look at a few key things about a business and investment and tell you, you know, and know whether he's going to invest in it or not.
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I think as we climb, you've been climbing 20 years, you can assess by just the way people talk and, maybe you wouldn't even have to watch them climb.
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You'd know from things they say that, you know, safety is important to them.
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I mean, by the mere fact that somebody's climbed 10 years, that's good.
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And they're standing in front of you, not in a wheelchair.
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That's probably.
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Number one, but did they climb once in the last 10 years or every weekend for 10 years?
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You know, there's all these little things, but I think I'm kind of like Warren Buffett.
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Now I've been climbing 40 years and probably within a short amount of time, I can assess somebody's skill level.
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And, you know, I probably wouldn't say no to climbing with somebody that I thought was I'm not going to say unsafe.
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I'm going to say their experience with climbing is maybe they don't pay enough attention to how serious it is.
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Cause somebody who is unsafe right now doesn't mean that I couldn't make them safe when they're climbing with me.
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safety is super important, right?
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And, I've seen stories of people who just don't get it.
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Maybe their attention span, maybe their attitude, whatever.
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And may climb with them never or once and that's it.
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all you people that I haven't called back for the second time climbing, it's because I love climbing with different people, not because you're unsafe or you weren't fun to climb with.
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yeah, I, I can't, you know, I can't, I don't know what advice to give people that are searching on Mountain Project or, um, Facebook or whatever groups online, um, It's been proposed, you know, by the American Alpine Club to have a AAC universal belay card that you've been tested to the same standard as everyone else in the, well, the country could be the world if we did it right, but, um, and it's frustrating for gym owners, right?
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Like, and people going to a new gym, it's like the ski pass, you have a bunch of ski passes on your thing, you go to a climbing gym, you got 17 belay cards, you're like, look, you don't really need to test me, do you?
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I've got all these belay cards,
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universal belay card.
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I'm intrigued by the concept.
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I'm also a little bit scared of how it might be implemented if it ever, uh, sees light of day And talking of belay cards, one of my favorite things to notice is you go outside climbing to some remote part of the world and people pull out their harnesses from their bags.
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And right on their belay loop, they might have like a touchstone belay card on it or whatever gym they go to.
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And they're like, and then, you know, I will ask them, Hey, what's your name?
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Which Tustin gym you climb at and they, are so surprised that I'm like, you know, you never took your belay card off before you boarded the plane to come climb in Greece.
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So no surprise there.
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I try to be goofy and will wear mine most of the times at crags, just so that no one else feels uncomfortable.
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I don't know, but it's a great, it's kind of like a great conversation starter too, you know, like.
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What t shirt you wear, or, you know, if you're a Washington Redskins fan, or I don't know, something like that, having your belay card, I think we shouldn't give people a bad time.
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Absolutely.
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yeah, safety is such an important part of our sport.
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You have spent more time on vertical terrain than, In some ways, most people alive.
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What may be a couple of specific things Hans, that you have adopted into your, uh, climbing routine that have kept you safe?
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I know that you may have had a couple of, uh, little skirmishes while climbing For the most part, knock on wood, you've been a safe climber.
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Are there certain things that have kept you safer despite being able to climb really, really fast?
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I think of them is, um, the advantage of embracing many, many partners is you learn different ways.
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And I'm actually going to the AMGA.
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SBI, Which is a single pitch instructor course in May a month from now.
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and I know that there's certain little nuances of ways to do things that they might prefer, and they say specifically in their thing, there is more than one way to be safe.
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And I really appreciate reading that in their, intro manual is that there's more than one way to be safe.
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And if you learn by rote, at a climbing gym, you know, past the figure eight through this way, this way, and it comes out this way.
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I've seen people, you turn the figure eight upside down and they'll be like, Hey, that doesn't look right.
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Okay, let me flip it over for you.
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And they're like, Oh, I know they've never looked at it from the other side.
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simple things like that, you know, that's kind of.
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Not being fair to people, but I've seen, you know, the Europeans will wear the, they'll use a, um, a screw link or a quick link that you'd find at a hardware store here in a lot of their clipping into things with aid, aiders and stuff.
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And partly because I think it's cheaper, but it's a surefire locked steel ring.
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Um, and they may have some other reasons for doing it.
00:18:36.549 --> 00:19:09.662
But my point more is that when you learn these other ways that are safe, Then you aren't uncomfortable when you see something well new because you're like well I've seen this is safe three ways, and here's a fourth way I haven't seen before, but if you only know one way you'll be scared and you know being scared or Ignorant is an unsafe Attitude or feeling to have you need to constantly educate yourself on new ways to do things or new to you anyway They might not be new to the other people
00:19:09.977 --> 00:19:20.419
Yeah, one can learn all kinds of techniques, including safety practices, and usually they are kind of fused together.
00:19:20.419 --> 00:19:31.690
The way people climb safety or adherence to safety is is embedded in those routines and the more one climbs.
00:19:32.414 --> 00:19:51.634
with different people and approaches new partners with that spirit of learning and curiosity can help that person pick out those, those skills, which could help them with not only the climbing itself but also become a better, safer climber.
00:19:52.605 --> 00:20:01.474
And I think it takes a certain amount of experience to recognize that, you know, one can't just learn everything from one person and maybe one person does.
00:20:02.375 --> 00:20:06.681
ABC really well, but then XYZ may not as well.
00:20:06.951 --> 00:20:10.711
And, uh, pick and choose the best practices from the best people.
00:20:11.030 --> 00:20:30.430
And I think you have done that, you know, with some of your early partners slash mentors, you were able to learn and do, uh, You know, obviously, uh, some pretty trailblazing things talking of having many partners you've had, you know, you've had a diversity of partners over the years.
00:20:31.859 --> 00:20:32.670
Fun question.
00:20:33.180 --> 00:20:40.250
What might be two or three favorite qualities about that partner?
00:20:40.970 --> 00:20:41.640
And.
00:20:42.204 --> 00:20:46.765
two or three qualities that were not your favorite.
00:20:46.815 --> 00:20:49.375
And sorry, not just from one partner, but from different partners.
00:20:49.684 --> 00:20:53.505
Some things you loved about your climbing partner, some things you absolutely detested.
00:20:54.464 --> 00:21:09.380
And I say that also with not just time on the rock, it could be time outside the rock because, because as people know, you know, when you sign up to climb with somebody, you are You're married to that person for the time of the climbing trip.
00:21:09.470 --> 00:21:12.910
So you share experience, observe all kinds of things.
00:21:12.910 --> 00:21:13.579
So yeah.
00:21:13.579 --> 00:21:14.009
Curious.
00:21:14.009 --> 00:21:19.962
What, what are some of those, things that you have, you have enjoyed or not enjoyed over the years
00:21:20.661 --> 00:21:28.977
well, let's, let's start with not enjoyed because I mean, if effectively I can say quite.
00:21:29.698 --> 00:21:37.978
solidly that if there's people that have qualities I don't enjoy, then I experienced it with them once And I don't climb with them again or don't adventure with them again.
00:21:38.705 --> 00:21:41.056
I don't try to change people too much.
00:21:41.056 --> 00:21:44.526
So, um, cause I don't like people lecturing to me either.
00:21:44.770 --> 00:21:55.258
something might be, this sounds very like philosophical, but somebody who's, interested in the summit or the end, and not so much, being present during the journey.
00:21:55.607 --> 00:22:00.258
Um, it sounds very philosophical, but I point out that Yosemite is a ditch.
00:22:00.817 --> 00:22:11.077
And when you quote, top out on El Cap or Half Dome, you're not on top of a peak, like, you know, some, uh, 2001 Space Audi on top of an obelisk.
00:22:11.218 --> 00:22:13.407
You've all, all you've done is crawled out of a ditch.
00:22:13.617 --> 00:22:15.538
You're not even at the highest point on the rim.
00:22:15.698 --> 00:22:17.758
You still have to hike another couple hundred feet to get to.
00:22:18.063 --> 00:22:19.313
Quote, the highest altitude point.
00:22:19.343 --> 00:22:20.103
Nobody does.
00:22:20.482 --> 00:22:30.182
Um, it's about that face of climbing the struggle for those 3000 feet, which that is a excellent representation of about the journey, not the end.
00:22:30.182 --> 00:22:30.593
Right?
00:22:31.048 --> 00:22:42.678
so people that go up with me for a half day or three quarter day and we get rained off and we're laughing as we're getting soaking wet and we're shivering, you know, that type person that is like, you.
00:22:43.067 --> 00:22:54.787
Instead of crying, they're laughing, you know, like we're going to have a good story to tell when we get back to the bar, if we get back to the bar tonight and have a hot chocolate or whatever, hot toddy, that's the type of person I like to go climbing with.
00:22:55.196 --> 00:23:08.326
And, you know, to that, although I have suffered, Often when I do public speaking for a bank, I always say bank or pharmaceutical or whatever, I have to explain I'm not the m word climber, which is mountaineer.
00:23:08.866 --> 00:23:10.576
I'm a t shirt and shorts climber.
00:23:11.247 --> 00:23:20.487
I've dabbled in quite a bit of mountaineering, but I really like being present there with shirt off or t shirt and shorts in the sun.
00:23:20.896 --> 00:23:49.753
Over, you know, shivering in a snow cave and then bragging to my buddy in the bar, like I've suffered more than you, I know you haven't, I suffered even worse, you know, there was a time I was stuck in this snow cave for seven days or something, you know, um, and I do think, I don't know, I, when someone says everyone should try it once, I don't know, maybe you shouldn't try mountaineering once, I've done it more than a couple of times and done type two or one, whatever fun suffering, and it's, it's interesting, but, um, yeah.
00:23:50.699 --> 00:23:57.009
95 percent of my climbing the last couple of decades has been t shirts and shorts, sort of sunny climbing weather.
00:23:57.353 --> 00:23:59.682
so there I did, I get to that question about partners.
