GoPro Awards: Climbing Mount Everest

Hey, is it good? Oh yeah, from here we can go. Oh yeah. Good morning everybody, it's day 40 of climbing Mount Everest. We're all ready to push for the summit. So we woke up at 12am, headed out at 1am, and yeah, this is it. The weather was luckily looking really good so far. It's projected to be a nice day. It wasn't too cold, wasn't too windy, but where we are is pretty shielded from the wind. The start of summit day isn't very windy. Once you get up to the fixed lines, now we're going to be clipped in and 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. 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. We're going to be having to clip around them. Actually, this person should have clipped around me because I'm going up. It's got a common courtesy, I'm not entitled. We're just going to have to maneuver around a lot of people. 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, not ice. We're just working up here. There's some footsteps kicked in because a lot of teams have gone up over the last couple days. Not really too much snowfall. Finally, the sun started to crack out and we could actually see where we were. We have a line of people behind us. It's really not that busy out today, but it was really beautiful. Here we are working up the southeast ridge. 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. Now we're heading up really to the south summit here. It's just a pretty steep slope. It takes a lot out of you. This is where most people turn back if they do. You could see all the mountains around us. It was just really awesome. The sun was coming out now. You could really feel it heating up. Coming out. Oh no. Oh boy. Not good man. That's not good. Someone's getting frostbite. So that right there was our lead Sherpa, Ferba. He is extremely fast and whenever I'm with him, I always get burnt. 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. The top. Progress. 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. 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. It 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 so 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. As we came over the south 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. And that was pretty emotional for me. 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. Ferva is still hauling. But yeah, I had to really lock in here. Footwork is key. 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. It definitely was getting a little bit cloudier. But we were all feeling good. So we just had to keep moving up. So now we were on the summit ridge looking out all over Nepal. And now as we went over that small little hill, we could see the summits. And it wasn't too crowded at all. In just five hours, me and Ferva went from Camp 4 all the way to the summits. 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. 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 Ferva taking a picture of my dog on my phone and with me. We didn't end up spending too much time up here. But we decided to wait for our team even though it was windy and cold. And 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. So once we got too cold though, we decided to head back down. And we were out of there.