and it was much, much colder.
We’re a team of six people.
Our goal is to determine
what the highest peak in Burma is and then climb it.
Like to solve this fantastic geographical mystery.
It never let up, just taken down to, like, nothing and
how… how did that happen?
( applause )
I first learned of Hkakabo Razi in 2001.
That’s the name of the peak and
so for, you know, 15 years I’ve dreamt of
going to this place in Northern Myanmar
the eastern edge of the Himalayas
and exploring this mountain.
And finally in the Fall of 2014
this sort of imagined expedition came to pass.
This is us, down to nothing at the end of our trip.
One of the most incredible, incredible adventures
I’ve ever been on in my life, and that’s saying a lot.
I’ve been on probably 40 different expeditions
all over the world.
In 2011, I led an expedition of about 12 athletes
with North Face.
Conrad Anker was one of those.
And it was a really amazing success
we all summited, skied from the top and…
That led to an invite to go on
a National Geographic-North Face supported expedition to Everest.
Mark Jenkins just happened to be on the trip as well.
I’d never met him before. He was coming in late.
We spent ten, ten days hiking into base camp together.
And that where we started talking about
all these adventures and exploration that we’d done and
and Mark is incredibly well traveled.
And the story of Burma came up
and…
I didn’t know the Himalayas ended in Burma.
So, we started talking about Hkakabo Razi and
Mark had actually tried to go and
climb it when the area was closed
and been, like, arrested and all these crazy things
that Mark does.
As we got further into the climb of Everest, and you can see here
this is heading towards the summit
and the people and the crowding.
It was just a stretch from where I had started
as this adventurer in new places
and here was this amazing mountain but
a lot of people and
just a different way of climbing that I wasn’t used to.
Mark and I summited Everest together and when we came down
as we were walking out, we’re like, this is happening.
We’re gonna make Hkakabo Razi happen
and that’s going to be our next trip.
And it’s going to be anti-Everest
and it’s gonna be an adventure. ( scoffs )
Little did we know.
( laughing )
So, the idea behind it was to really explore
and travel over land and find this mountain and…
take GPS’s with us and tag the summit and
see if it was really the highest mountain in South East Asia.
So, planning the trip, this is pretty much
what I had to work with.
And you can that the whole mountain is blurred out
like it doesn’t really exist.
Then the next thing is, you know, you have to pick a team.
So, this had to be a really unique team
because we were going for two months
and there’s probably only, like,
ten days of actual climbing.
So, first of all
getting a bunch of athletes together is like herding cats.
They’re all over the world, all the time
and then we show up, you know, in Tokyo with a zillion bags.
They all weighed about 70 pounds and
we’re used to Nepal standards of ‘you carry everything’.
You have jeans at base camp and you have extra shoes
and flip flops and a sun hat and…
We showed up with all of that stuff.
It didn’t last very long.
Um, quick video about us getting into the country.
( instrumental music )
Usually on these trips
you definitely don’t take time to see a place so much
which is definitely a drawback to a lot of expeditions.
Is you land in this foreign place
but you just beeline straight for the mountains.
( instrumental music )
-( bells ringing ) -( indistinct chatter )
All aboard!
( instrumental music )
Mark: Hilaree and I conceived of this
as kind of the anti-Everest trip.
We were coming off of Everest together.
Been successful and kind of wondered
“Okay, what’s an old fashioned expedition?”
Start in the capital of the country
go over land all the way to your mountain.
With this team, I think we have as good a chance as anyone
of resolving the mystery of
what’s the highest peaks in Burma.
( instrumental music )
Normally, as a climber, you just
you fly through these countries and
you go straight to the mountains
and it’s actually a risk to travel over land
because that’s the time when you get sick
you wear yourself down unnecessarily.
But, none of us had been to this country
and all of us individually had spent
so much time in Asia in general
that we wanted to really experience the country
and that involved going over land
which was about 1000 miles and we took about
every possible mode of transportation,
you could imagine.
So, I had this like, romantic notion of trains that is…
I think it doesn’t apply to this country.
This was a gentleman that we thought was actually dead
when they were putting him in there but he wasn’t.
He was alive and he was, kind of being passed through this window
to his family inside.
This is as the train started.
And I think from that expression on my face this was early on.
And I was still thinking like
“Oh my Gosh, this is so great
like, wow, this is gonna be amazing.”
And then–
There’s another video here
that will give you a better idea of what the train was like.
Emily: I would say this is
definitely another step above the Everest trip.
More remote, more challenging
and the worst travel experience I’ve ever had.
-( train car buckles ) -( screaming )
Literally you’d be airborne and
then just slammed back into your seat.
And then you’d be launched again and slammed back into your seat.
Doing that for 18 hours just sort of makes you insane.
Hilaree: We’re on an adventure and I think that was
what got me started in expeditions in the first place.
Just this excitement for the unknown.
I mean, the funny thing about an adventure is that
you never know when the unknown part is going to strike you.
And we learned later–
Taylor, who was the base camp manager, she was like
“So, before we left, I was kind of looking on the internet
and I found this thing that
the train in Burma is called the Death train.”
I was like, “Why didn’t you tell us that
before we got on the train?”
But, yeah, so that’s, don’t ride the train in Burma.
So, the train took us to Mytchina.
We’re now in the Kachin state.
And there is a little bit of tribal fighting and everything
between Mytchina and Putao.
So, we were required to take a domestic flight to Putao
which was kind of our final destination
before we set out for the mountain.
So, Putao, 205 miles to the mountain.
We just had our own feet to get us there and motorcycles.
At this point, we were put under town arrest in Putao.
And we arrived on a Friday
we were supposed to leave on Saturday
we had our motorcycles ready
we had porters waiting for us in the jungle
and we couldn’t leave town.
And Mark and I were frantic, we were running around
trying to talk to every government official
anyone we could.
But, of course it was the weekend and it was like
some random, weird holiday and nobody would talk to us.
And finally, Monday afternoon
after we went through government in Yangon
we finally got clearance.
But, we didn’t actually–
we weren’t actually able to leave until Tuesday.
In the end, this four-day delay
caused a lot of strife as the trip went on.
So, the day that we were cleared to go, it started raining.
Of course!
And a lot of the motorcycle drivers had left.
So, we ended up having to confine a lot of our gear on a
on a smaller amount of bikes.
This was Taylor. She was on the back of this guy’s bike.
And um… I just like this picture.
She was kind of miserable.
Um, and you’ll see why here, from this next video.
( sound of rain )
Hilaree: We finally got our permissions yesterday.
We are packing up motorcycles, that looks totally sketchy.
This is my driver…
he just cracked a beer
at 7:30 in the morning.
I’m gonna ride with him.
( motorcycle starts )
Got a 50-pound backpack and a 30-pound Movi in my right hand.
Not really sure how that’s gonna work, but, see how it goes.
( water splashing )
I mean, I don’t know, it’s probably really hard driving
but I just feel like I have the shittiest driver.
( instrumental music )
We’re in “Expedition 101” mode.
And it’s definitely, partly, you know…
my mistake.
I should’ve been keeping better track of
where the bikes were and everything.
But, right now, we’re getting pretty spread out.
On the way in we get 80 miles on motorcycles in four days.
And then, we started the jungle walk.
( insects buzzing )
When we were first getting on the motorcycles
one of this driver–
one of the drivers looked at me and I was wearing shorts.
And he was like, “Shorts?”
( audience laughter )
He’s like, “Pants, you should put on pants.”
I was like, “Oh, no, no, I’m fine.
It’s super hot. I don’t like heat.”
Um, so I went out the first day in shorts.
I thought he meant, because like you could get scratched
by bamboo or you know, whatever.
But, instead I just got completely mauled
by these no-see-ums.
So, there weren’t mosquitos but there were these gnats and bees.
All these bee stings.
I had hundreds of bites just from that one day.
And I put shorts on, even that, or pants,
like I had, you know those trekker-zip on things
and I, I mean I put pants on by the end of the day
because I kind of finally figured it out
but it was already too late.
And, so this was my first real test with suffering.
I mean, I live at 9,000 feet for a reason
because I don’t really like bugs.
I think, does anybody ever feel like this?
Like if you have an intense dislike of something
and then it seems to recur over and over in your life.
Mine’s like bugs and snakes and spiders and–
I must have come across five different snakes on the trek.
And this was the first one that I almost stepped on
within like, two hours of getting off the motorcycles
and walking on the trail.
There’s a lot of snakes in Burma.
Some leeches. Lots of leeches in the area.
These actually were so common and frequent that
they kind of became inconsequential by the end.
But, the first time
we were hiking at night through the jungle
and just coming down and
Emily got there before me and she sat down.
I had this white shirt on and she had her headlamp on and
I took my pack off and I undid the buckle
And she looks up with her headlamp and
the entire middle section of my white shirt was soaked in blood.
And she screamed and started freaking out
and it was from a leech.
Like, I had no idea, I never even saw it.
And just, when they fall off
they put this sort of anti-coagulant in you
and so you continue to bleed.
So, it didn’t hurt me or anything
but it looked so gruesome.
I thought Emily was going to faint. ( laughs )
But, the one thing that stood out was the water.
And I think this the reason that none of use got sick was
because it was the clearest, bluest best tasting water
I have ever seen in my entire life.
And I think it’s just because this area is so untrammelled.
You had springs coming out of the side of the hills that we–
you know, we had all these water pumps and everything
that we just stopped using and just drank the water straight
and it was incredible, and none of us got sick.
So, going back to that town arrest
the porters didn’t wait for us, for those four days, they left.
We didn’t realize we were coming right at harvest season.
So, they all went back to the fields.
And so, this was a major issue
and we had enough gear for 80 porters.
But, there’s not this porter history
like there is in Nepal or India or Pakistan.
And so, none of them really cared.
They thought we were just crazy people
trying to get into a mountain with way too much stuff.
So, at any given point, the most we had was maybe 30 porters.
And what happened was
we had to make some really tough decisions at this point.
And that was hang on to those base camp booties and go home
or cut a lot of our gear.
We basically cut about two-thirds of our gear.
At one point Renan
who’s like this big man’s man was like, in tears.
Because he had to get rid of all of his camera stuff.
I mean, the most incredible… takeaway from this is
what Cory and Renan were able to pull out as far as
video and photography with literally sharing lenses
and two camera bodies and nothing else.
”
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