Climbing Mount Everest - Summit Day

Hey, is it good? Oh yeah. Don't do anything to it. Oh yeah. Good morning everybody. It's day 40 of climbing Mount Everest. We're all ready to push for the summits. So we woke up at 12am, headed out at 1am, and yeah, this is it. Leaving Camp 4. Having our way up. See what we've got. To visualize the route for today, I took this yesterday when we got into Camp 4, but currently we're heading up this mediocre, not that steep slope right here. And as we continue up through the day, we're going to reach the balcony, which is that kind of lump you see at the top here. And then we're going to head up that ridge line all the way to the self summit, which is the highest point you see there. That isn't the summit. The summit is behind it, but it's going to take us quite a bit to get up there. And if there's any time I quit, it's going to be before then. Because after that, it's pretty smooth sailing. So we're just working up this face right now. The weather was luckily looking really good so far. It's projected to be a nice day. It wasn't too cold. It wasn't too windy. But where we are is pretty shielded from the wind. The start of summit day isn't very windy. But once you get to the top of that kind of hill I was just showing a second ago, you get up to the fixed lines. Now we're going to be clipped in. We're going to have our ascender. Our ascender is going to keep us from falling back. It's just going to bite into the rope. And then the safety carabiner is going to stop us from falling. If we end up falling, it's going to hit an anchor. So we're just going to ride these ropes up. The whole way to the top is fixed. So we shouldn't have to worry about falling. We're just going to keep a steady pacing and get up there. So as you can see, we're on oxygen. We're on one of the highest flow rates you can have. We have enough oxygen for the day. So we're going to be able to get up and down. And as you can see further off in the distance, there's already a decent amount of people already up on the balcony. You can see their headlamps. So we'll be up there soon. Full moon. Very nice. See the lights in the distance. We're going up high. So as we're on the fixed lines, there's going to be a lot of people that are coming down. I'm not sure if this person turned back or not. They were going down pretty early. I don't think they would have summited yet. But we're going to be having to clip around them. Well, actually, this person should have clipped around me because I'm going up. It's kind of common courtesy. I'm not entitled. But yeah, we're just going to have to maneuver around a lot of people. It's getting steep here. Making some progress. Look at Noopsy. I don't know what to say. We're getting after it. Such a nice morning. 2.30am or something. Sherpa is speed demon. Dude won't slow down. He's going for it. Can you believe that guy? So that right there was our lead Sherpa, Ferba. He is extremely fast. And whenever I'm with him, I always get burnt. But I was feeling pretty good today. So as you get higher up on this beginning face, you'll reach these rocks. It gets a little bit technical. Once you get to this point, it gets harder for your crampons to dig into the snow because it's rock and not ice. So we're just working up here. There's some footsteps kicked in because a lot of teams have gone up over the last couple of days. Not really too much snowfall. Soon enough, after traversing over these rocks, we'd be reaching our first milestone, which is the balcony. It's the first main break spot that people would go to and you can start to really see your progress. Currently at the balcony. First break spot. Sun's cracking out. Next stop is the south summit. And it's the summit from there. Add some water. Fuel up. Crack out here. So finally the sun started to crack out and we could actually see where we were. We have a line of people behind us. Really not that busy out today, but it was really beautiful. So here we are working up the southeast ridge. Here we're going up. There's the south summit. Behind us, the main one. That's the first summit. This is beautiful. Skibinito! Moving in here. You can see the hill where we stepped. This looks sick. Nice steep part here. Off to the south summit. Holy, are you kidding me? Look at this. So we continued up the southeast ridge. There was a really nice foothold to step on, but you can see where we came from at the end of that was the balcony. And now we're heading up really to the south summit here. It's just a pretty steep slope. Takes a lot out of you. This is where most people turn back if they do. And you can see all the mountains around us. It was just really awesome. Sun was coming out now. You could really feel it heating up. Sun's coming out. Oh no. Oh boy. That's a man. That's not good. Someone's getting frostbite. Holy crap. Speed team right here. Look at these guys. Per usual, Ferbo was flying up the route. But here we had some kind of steps. Literal steps in the snow. Which was really nice. They kind of look like slabs. Not really sure how they formed like that, but made it pretty easy for us to get up. So we were really starting to get some elevation gain. Definitely far into the death zone now, but feeling pretty good. Had my breath and was just moving up. These little steps here. Going to the top. Making good progress. Sun's out. Almost to the top of the South Summit. Here we are. Approaching the South Summit. Very cloudy. Came all the way from down that ridge. All the way down there. Just resting on my Ascender. Hands free. I've been waiting like a year and four months for this. It's finally happening. I can see my house from here. What's up? So as we started getting towards the top of the South Summit, a lot of people have summited by now, and we're coming back down. So we're going to have a little bit of traffic damage going on. We have three climbers here that we're going to clip around me. But as we got a little bit higher up, me and Ferba were about to get caught behind a pretty big line of people that we were hoping we would be able to pass at one point. Not sure what's up with this. Cloud coverage. Congratulations. Thank you. So as people are going down, you just kind of have to stand there, get on the other side of the rope because you don't want to accidentally push them because there's usually a small portion of time where they're not going to be clipped into the rope as they're trying to get around you. As we finally made it to the top of the South Summit, we hit that big line I was talking about. There was quite a few people here that were going a little slower. They seemed pretty tired. But me and Ferba were kind of looking for an opportunity at this point to hopefully get around them. So then as he usually does, Ferba said, come on, let's go. And we clipped off the rope pretty much completely and went to the right here, holding on, making sure that we didn't make any bad foot movements that would cost us a fall. So we were able to get around them. Might seem a little bit rude, but when you're up here, you really don't want to get caught behind anybody. You never know when the weather might turn. And you don't want to lose your small summit window just because you got caught up behind somebody. So you got to pass when you can. There it is. As we came over the cell summit, we now had a clear view of the Hillary Step. It was at this point I started tearing up quite a bit. I was feeling really good. And at this point I knew I would make it. The weather was still pretty good. It was getting a little bit windier, but when you finally can actually see the summits, it's right there, obviously something can go wrong, but I knew I was going to make it at this point. That was pretty emotional for me. I'm going to try to get on the Hillary Step. There's Mark. Final push. I'm going to do it. So I decided to put away the emotions because I knew anything could happen, so I'd rather not call it victory now and then have to turn back later. But here we are, about to get on the Hillary Step. Ferba is still hauling. But yeah, I had to really lock in here. Footwork is key. Oh my gosh. Approaching the summits. Crap this. We're all the way down there. So it definitely wasn't as calm as it was when we were moving up the southeast ridge, but now we are about to get on the summit ridge. Still very summitable. Winds were getting a little bit heavier. Definitely was getting a little bit cloudier, but we were all feeling good, so we just had to keep moving up. So now we are on the summit ridge, looking out all over Nepal. And now, as we went over that small little hill, we could see the summit, and it wasn't too crowded at all. In just 5 hours, me and Ferba had went from Camp 4 all the way to the summit. I'm not going to lie, it did look a little messy, to say the least. People had left stuff up here, which doesn't make much sense at all, but it really didn't take away from the moment at all. Even though there wasn't any view, this was the highest you could go. There's no other point besides this. So we made our way up to enjoy our small moment on the summit. Thank you, thank you. Summit! So I found this one way, and he's got it, and I'm going to sit here. Whoo! Came all the way down the valleys. Oh no, I don't think I'm going to be able to help this mountain Everest. Shout out to this whole next class, second grade class. We did it! So I meant to take a picture of my dog up with me, and an actual picture, and take a picture of him on top, but I ended up forgetting it, so here's Herbert taking a picture of my dog on my phone and with me. That was nice to share with him. We didn't intend on spending too much time up here, but we decided to wait for our team, even though it was windy and cold. It was awesome just to see everybody get up there, everybody show off their banners and kind of share the moment with the dozen or so people that were up there. Once we got too cold though, we decided to head back down, and we were out of there. Careful. So here we are, moving down the Summit Ridge, and I don't know what is up with me and the Sherpas, but this is my personal Sherpa, not Ferba, and he was going fast. I don't know why we were going so fast down. We had made great time. We were feeling good. We had plenty of oxygen, but my guy was going so fast. I mean, he was unclipping and clipping for me. I didn't even get the chance to clip my own carabiner, but hey, you know what? I'm not going to complain. It is more dangerous going down the mountain. That's when most of the deaths occur because people are tired, and it's just harder to go down. If you fall, you're going to fall down the mountain, not into the slope. So we really had to make sure to be careful when we were clipping around people who were going up. Now we made some great timing back onto the southeast ridge. Look at my man. He is flying. Like I said, we didn't really need to go this fast. It was going to eventually wear me out probably. We haven't met the Sherpa yet, but this was Pemba Sherpa, I believe. He was just for my summit day. Besides that, I didn't have a personal Sherpa. I was just chilling with Ferba, but here we are making it down the ridge, and by this point, I was pretty exhausted. Going down definitely was a lot more difficult than going up. Made it back to Camp 4 successfully. That's the summit right there. All the way from there. Honestly, coming down was harder than going up. My work here is done. Just have to go down there now. Let's go, baby. I'm also going to be posting the entire descent down from Camp 4, going through the Khumbu Icefall again. So subscribe for that if you enjoyed this video. Follow me on Instagram. I post more stuff there. Really thank you all for watching. It was such a journey. I'll see you tomorrow.