K2: The Savage Mountain |Fredrik Sträng, Pt. 1: On Climbing the World’s Highest Peaks | 4
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From Wondery, I'm Mike Corey and this is Against the Odds. Today we wrap up our series K2 the Savage Mountain about the summer of 2008 when some of the world's best climbers converged on one of the most dangerous mountains on earth K2 all of them intent on making a bid for the summit.

What followed was one of the worst climbing disasters in modern times. Over the course of two days, the mountain claimed 11 lives. But the deadly turn of events on K2 also led to extraordinary acts of bravery and an incredible demonstration of the ability of human beings to dig deep and find the strength to stay alive. And today, we are talking to someone who was there in the summer of 2008, Frederick Strang,

Frederick reached Camp 4, just below the death zone, before deciding not to try for the peak because of all the climbers backed up on the rope line. A decision that wasn't easy.

But K2 wasn't Frederick's first experience on a challenging mountain, and it wasn't the last. He has climbed the highest mountains on all seven continents. This will be a two-part interview you don't want to miss. In part one, I'm talking to Frederick about the challenges of climbing and what it's like to train for these feats. In part two, we'll talk about what happened on that tragic day on K2 when disaster struck in the Death Zone.

Frederick Strang, welcome to Against the Odds. Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure. Well, first of all, man, I got to say you and I are probably going to get along really well because we're both doing the thing that we were most scared to do as kids. For me, it was public speaking and for you, it was heights, right? To share.

So as a kid who was scared of heights, how did you first get interested in climbing? Well, it all started out in school as a map freak. I've always been addicted to maps and I was running, orienteering, competing, orienteering. I indulged in the Atlas and I was turning page after page. And at that stage, seven years old,

I wasn't aware of the highest peaks around the world. So I was following the contours and I was trying to find out which the highest mountain in the world was. So I was getting to Pamirs in Kyrgyzstan and I was going into Tibet and it was getting higher and higher. I was in Pakistan and something said 8611. That's not the highest. That's the second highest.

And then I eventually I ended up at 8848 meters. And it said Mount Everest. And the school teacher comes along and I point at 8848. And we have a saying in the province that I used to live. It goes like, it's never too late to give up.

And, and she was looking at me and I was pointing at it with anticipation and joy in my, in my eyes. And she was just looking at me. It was this terrible look of, you know, it never works, she said. So that was the first encounter with Everest. And it actually sparked something inside of me. Questions arise. Then I was wondering, what does it take?

physically and mentally to prepare for such a mountain. And I think that the difference between winners and losers in many accounts is the questions you ask. So instead of resigning and saying, well, it's probably never going to work, I was asking different questions. And that was more practical ones. If people have done it in the past, why can't I? I have a saying that's, never trust someone who isn't fascinated by a map. Yeah.

I'll remember that one. So what was the first mountain you ended up climbing? That's a good one. Define mountain. Well, I remember when I was probably 14, 15 years of age, we went to Norway and we went trekking.

And back then I didn't have the high-tech gear. I think none of us had actually. So I was soaked to the bone all the time because I didn't have Gore-Tex. It was very wet. We went to a mountain called Glittertind and it's not the highest mountain in Norway. It's only 2,000 vertical meters. But it did ignite this allure and this taste for further adventures.

I guess I wonder why none of the epic 2000-ers of Sweden called your name first. Because Sweden is relatively flat, right? There's not many mountains in Sweden. Oh, no, no, no, no. I mean, we call them speed bumpers more or less. But there is a mountainous area up north. It's beautiful because you experience the aurora borealis, the northern lights. And in the summer, you have the midnight sun. So the sun never actually goes below the horizon.

And how high was that mountain in Norway?

It's not hard. I mean, it's a trekking peak. But the thing is that the beauty about it was that we were all alone. So if something would have happened back in the days, we didn't have mobile phones or there were no cellular reception or anything of that. I think that was part of the lure as well. Understanding that we were left on our own devices. And if something went bad, eventually we had to cope with it and trying to solve the situation. I think that's

something missing today i mean so much is about just eliminating risk all the time but i think that the risk of not risking is losing our place in the world and also connection with mother nature which i think is important yeah can you can you try to explain to us that feeling inside of you when you got to that very first peak albeit maybe a small one the

The thing about it was that it was more like going off the map. It was uncharted. It felt like we were the first people ever to place our foot on top of Glitterton.

And I come to understand that that's the kind of feeling I'm searching when I'm climbing. Bringing that sense and that joy into the adventures you go on sort of justifies the struggle and the fight and the sacrifices. So going to Glittertin, I think that was just pure joy. It was this innocent feeling of, you know, perhaps not conquering, but vanquishing a peak

But then again, I learned about Sir Edmund Hillary and so on, and he said that it's not the peak that we are conquering but ourselves. In our fast-paced, screen-filled world, it can be all too easy to lose that sense of imagination and wonder. If you're looking for new ways to ignite your creativity and open your mind to fresh perspectives, then let Audible be your guide. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, or any genre you love,

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I'm a bit fascinated how people are drawn to high altitude climbing and these like Herculean goals of the seven summits or climbing all 14, 8,000 meter peaks, 8,000ers, right? All 14, 8,000ers. There's a famous George Mallory quote that's, why would a person want to climb a mountain like Everest? He says, because it's there. That's the reason. And do you share that sentiment?

What drives you for the big summits? Well, George Lee Mallory, I mean, he's a legend. I've studied him quite a bit. Actually, as a matter of fact, I've been on Everest trying to retrieve the camera that is lost, the Kodak Westpocket camera that can...

perhaps if found, revealed if they made it to the top or not back in 1924. That's a treasure. Yeah, that's one of the greatest adventure mystery out there. But I was fascinated about George Lee Mellor at an early stage. And this quote, this famous quote of him, I think pinpoints the essence, the core of perhaps the perplexity of climbing because

The net sum of climbing is zero because you start from A, you gain B, and you go back to A. So what's the point? And I think that George Lee Mallory described it even a better way when he said that if you have to ask the question, you won't understand the answer. And only when you experience it and you push through sometimes hell,

and experience dehydration and fatigue and perhaps other losses of senses too. When you come back, it's like you're being reincarnated. It's like you have compressed two intense months on a mountain into all the emotions and all the emotional stages of a lifetime.

Before we move on, I'd love to, just so I can get my mind around it, I'm not a big mountaineer myself, and our listeners may or may not be, but just can we go over some of the numbers of the biggest mountains in the world? So how many meters is K2 and Everest and some of these heavy hitters, these titans of the world? So the metrics is 8848. That's the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest. Akka, Shomolungba, the mother goddess of the world.

And it's the highest mountain, but not the most technical one. There are mountains that are regarded much harder to actually summit. And some of these mountains are K2, which is the second highest mountain in the world, which measures 8,611 meters. K2 also have this a nation called the Savage Mountain. And it has had some very terrible accident throughout the years. But if you go by statistics,

The perhaps most formidable mountain would probably be Annapurna. It has the highest death toll by far and the reasons for this is because of the treacherous avalanches that sweeps the big faces. And there aren't actually any better ways up the mountains so you have to cross them somehow.

It's like more or less like a Russian roulette. Yeah. As far as mountains people know, obviously Everest is the most famous. But I would say one of the highest peaks that is the most accessible and getting quite famous would be something like Kilimanjaro, right? In Africa. And I heard that was one of your first big peaks as well?

Well, it's actually quite staggering because if you count the biggest vertical gain from the base to the summit Kilimanjaro is the highest freestanding peak in the world. Oh, really? Yeah, it is quite amazing. It's an extinct volcano or dormant volcano, I should say, perhaps.

But it's a trick, but it shouldn't be underestimated. People do get headaches from altitude sickness, et cetera. And one has to be cautious. There are no lions and stuff running around trying to bite you up the mountain. But still, the headache from high altitude can bite you real badly. And some people, they're just trying to fly up there. And I think because they're a good athlete and have high fitness, there are like

immune to the high altitude and it strikes hard when it strikes. So many people actually fail on Kilimanjaro despite its low angle and how easy it is to walk up. Well, actually, that was me. I did make it up, but I climbed it this January, actually. Congratulations. Well...

The highest I've been prior to that was, I think if you go up to the Laras Trek in Peru, I think you hit like 4,100. And I was okay there, but going to Kilimanjaro, which is 5,800 and something change, killed me, man. Oh my God. I never felt altitude sickness like that before. And I had to take Diamox, the pill. And in our group, there was six of us.

One person didn't make it and another person had to be like basically carried up and down because the thin air, it does things to you. And if you haven't felt that before, it's a little bit scary, right? Well, the thing with Kilimanjaro is that it doesn't necessarily have to be like that because when we do our big mountains, we acclimatize incrementally and we pay attention to how we feel. And we know that...

about 3000 meters of altitude, we shouldn't preferably ascend in a higher rate than 300 to 500 meters per day. With Kilimanjaro, which is an exception,

People don't spend that much time on the mountain. They want to come up and down rather quickly. Otherwise, the price is rising quite steadily because you pay per day that you're on the mountain. I would say that, you know, don't go fast. Save up a little bit more cash and bucks and go on a seven or eight day trip and do the Le Mosho trek. The Le Mosho is by absolutely far the most...

and diverse trek of them all. You go through rainforests till the steppe and you almost circle around the entire mountain. So you see quite a bit. Actually, what they were saying is that every day you add on is about an extra 10% success rate. So if you want to do a quick five day one, it's 50% because you don't have the time to acclimate. And actually, I did La Moche route. I'd never seen landscapes like that before. And I remember standing on the summit and...

I was like, human beings shouldn't be up here. It's too high. Did you cry? I didn't cry. No? I did. The first time I did. Did you? Oh, my God. I was crying. I think what happened, I think that it was part altitude sickness and part, you know, some epiphany or angel descended from sky that touched me because I was literally crying out loud. This is heaven.

Oh my God. You know, the sun was coming up. There was this Kumbaya feeling and the Lion King. It was perfect. I was struck by so much love and so much appreciation for life. And then I jumped up my feet and I just ran literally to the summit. Do you know what's almost as good as reaching the summit though? When you go back down and you have that first cold beer and you look at the top and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe we were all the way up there.

Of course, they have Kilimanjaro beer as well. Great creativity.

So on Kilimanjaro, it's not a mountain that takes very many lives. But as you start moving up the totem pole, as far as these big mountains into like 7,000 or even maybe 6,000, I'm not even quite sure. I imagine the risks start to go up as well. Well, not necessarily because some people, they say, and that's their main argument, that

The more you spend time in the mountains, the more likely you eventually end up in a precarious situation where it's a deadly outcome. I wouldn't actually sign on that argument because I actually think that with time and with experience, you become a wiser and more smarter and savvy climber. And with this wisdom and this expertise,

you take precautions and you do calculated risks better than you ever had before. So I think actually the risks decreases with time as I do and many others do. They climb more technical things as they grow and more confident and better at climbing.

But I'd say that it's a balance between being wise enough to step back and seize another day instead of all in and do or die missions. I don't think that those climbers live very long. And I don't think one should perhaps call it oneself professional in that case. You know, going to the summit is voluntary. Going down is mandatory. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

You said calculated risk, and that's a really...

That's a really interesting way to say it because you train very hard for these sorts of things, right? And I guess people think they're absolutely crazy, but knowledge is an important part of it as well, yeah? It is. I mean, I also think someone said, you don't know what you don't know. And that's true. I know when I started out, we were rookies. We were like vigilantes. I mean, we just went out there and we didn't even know if the ropes we had worked.

was certified and we wear hockey helmets and we did all the mistakes that you can imagine. And looking back now, it's a matter of just luck that none of us got hurt. But then I started out taking courses and I started to learn the techniques and I was getting mentors. Spare yourself from facing potential hazards and dangerous situations by

knowing your stuff and taking lessons from mountain guides, because that will save you so much time in the end. And do you remember the first time you were on a mountain and you're like, okay, things are getting a little bit tedious here? Well, tedious is something that we experience all the time.

But I think if you reach complacency and if you start to play around with your fingers and looking at the watch, that's the time when you should be worried. Mm-hmm.

I never approach a route, no matter how easy it is, with indifference. And we always check and double check harnesses, knots, the gear, how we place it. Because, you know, we can tie 100 or 100,000 knots, but it only takes one knot that is not tied in properly and you die. Yeah.

And that training is so important because you have to be able to just do it, not think about it, just know almost like autopilot. And that's the training. You want to kind of try to have enough preparedness to be able to mitigate risk. There's always going to be risk. Life has risk, man. You know, like you can't ever avoid risk. But also you said in your TED talk, I have it written down here because I love it so much. Fear is a construct. Danger is real. And it's very important ways to think about these mountain climbs, right? Yeah.

I think so. I mean, just look at your daily routines. If we go around being worried about things that perhaps never is going to come true, I think we're wasting a lot of energy. And we're putting a lot of energy on fear and constructs that we can direct on more productive and more happier things. So I think that it's good to come to terms with...

What is this fear? I mean, the fear might be real for me because I experienced it, but what evidence do I have that this fear is actually justified? But fear is one of those sneaky things, right? Because there's fears you should listen to, like don't jump off a building. But we have all these pre-programmed fears in from things from our childhood or events in our lives, and they can scream at us just as loudly. But life is a dance with risk, right? And also, it's a relationship with

with fear. It's a dance with fear and it's trying to understand that inside yourself. And it seems like these extreme activities, these ones where you have to confront your fears head on, really you can get a massive amount of growth from. But again, dangerous is dangerous. That's a different kind of ballpark. I think that some people get overwhelmed and sometimes they misunderstand the dangers. We see that in a lot of videos on the internet. People are more concerned about

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. So I was reading about a climb you did in 2003 where you were in Nepal with a group of climbers on the mountain Dalagiri, which is the seventh highest mountain in the world, and an avalanche hit. Can you talk about what happened then and how you navigated that? So we are walking through something which is called Hidden Valley.

It's not very hidden, it's quite open and it's vast, it's humongous. And we are a bit late, actually very late in the afternoon due to some calculations back in base camp where we couldn't figure out where our stuff was. So because of this lack of attention and lack of planning and preparedness

We got a late start and we were coming up. Everything was fine until we heard this rumbling, big, very scary, intimidating sound above us. I've never experienced an avalanche, thankfully, and I'm sure most people haven't as well. Can you in detail so we can understand what that sound is like? Everything starts with, it's very innocent in the beginning.

you just hear a big chunk, like a crack. Something like that. And it's like bass. It's bass sound. But it's a crack at the same time. So it's like something breaks, like a bone breaks. And then you can actually feel the vibrations in it.

in the mountain, in your feet. So we look up, we look over our shoulders and we see up. But since we're so far away and since it's so hard to gauge how far the distance is, immediately we think that, well, it's probably a small one. We see avalanches more or less all the time.

But as it gains traction and speed, it starts to dig up and it starts to eat up the remaining masses of fresh snow and rumble and ice chunks and Xerox, we call them in France, which is a big ice chunk. And everything is starting to build momentum and comes down and it gathers speed. So it gets faster and faster and faster.

And the sound that you hear is... And it sounds almost like a flamethrower. Like a flamethrower on steroids. And as we watch below in this valley, we see four figures. And these are men. And they're running for their lives. And there's nothing we can do to assist and help apart from just watching them

And being prepared to run down with our shovels and trying to relocate them in the debris. And the snow mass is coming down and the four figures, the four Germans had just passed an area where they were safe from avalanche. But it just came 100 meters or 300 feet behind them.

And it went over this huge valley, and it actually traveled up about a thousand feet on the other side of the mountain. That's how big and humongous this avalanche was. And when everything settles down, there's this huge dust of fine-grained snow that slowly, slowly falls down, like from an atomic Cold War bomb, you know.

And it covers the entire valley with this thin sheet of snow crystals. And the people that comes up, we join them and we talk about it. And they're obviously shaking and we are shaking. And the thing that perhaps you forget when these kind of occurrences happen is that you don't assess what went wrong and what went right. We were lucky.

to be alive. But something I learned over the years is to ask five why questions in a row. And when you ask these five why questions, you get to the core of what actually went wrong.

And as I dissected this incident, we asked why, why, why were we there? Well, it was the easiest route by far so obvious. Yes, we took that route. Why were we late? Well, we were late because we got an early late start. Why did we get a late start? Because we did not pack our bags in the evening before. Why didn't we do that?

Because we made an assumption that we would have enough time to pack our bags in the morning. And because of a freaking assumption, we could have died. And that is what distinguished people from...

sometimes who live and don't live, it's lack of preparedness and lack of keeping to the rules, to the rules that in late afternoons, snow heats up because of the sun. And when it heats up, it gets warm and heavy, and that can easily trigger avalanches. So there's less chance of avalanches during the night. That doesn't make immune to avalanches. That's not your ticket to

your eternal ticket to not being struck by an ambulance, but it significantly reduces your risks. If you would say, "Well, is it worth it?" That's a completely different thing. I mean, for me, I think the reward is worth the risk.

But here we did a stupid thing. We didn't obey the rules and we couldn't pay the highest price. Now we were lucky. And we can't depend on luck. So we always have to build that into the equation that sometimes we can be lucky, but we can't discount the fact that sometimes we're unlucky. So preparedness is alpha omega and obeying the rules if you want to stay lucky.

healthy in the mountains. Fear setting is this idea that you, before you do something big, you think about everything that could go wrong, not because you expect it to go wrong, but so you can thoroughly plan if it does. And then usually 99 times out of a hundred things don't go wrong, but it sounds like it's very similar. We call it pre-job breathing. I think it's the same thing. We sit down and we write down everything that can just go to hell.

And we make up a plan, we have a redundancy plan and a contingency plan how to deal with these circumstances.

And then we practice these things. It could be, for instance, what if we're sitting in the tent on 8,200 meters and suddenly there's a storm and the tent poles pops? What about if the gas leaks and we don't have any gas to boil our precious water that we need to sustain life? We need to be hydrated. Otherwise...

Soon we will get symptoms from altitude sickness, etc. All these kinds of eventualities we're trying to have a plan B for. And we practice them quite often.

You also in your TED talk, you were talking about shaving off the tags of your clothing to save something like 55 grams of weight. Yeah. For me, that was such an excellent way to make us understand how much you have to think about these things, how much you have to prepare for these things. Oh, yeah. I mean, so all the washing tags, I just tear them off.

And I save a lot of grams. And for every step I take, I know that I have an advantage because I know that I'm caring less. I know that I'm

I found the lightest and most durable backpack. I know that the thermos I have has the best heat insulation versus weight, etc. So it's all part of the game. It's all part of the success plan. You can't leave one of these digits out in the equation. It all adds up in the end. And also another aspect which people, you know,

Don't put into account, it's quite fun and creative to do all this shit.

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And I made this call because my oxygen apparatus did not work and I was experiencing a cold. I had a fever and my throat was probably infected. So I wasn't operating very well. And that was the wisest thing to do. I turned around, but at the time it felt like the most stupid things I've ever done because I could see the summit. It was only like one and a half hour away and it was still early in the morning.

But there was no time for debates. I just looked up and everything was very pragmatical. I did my calculations and I found out that this is not safe. If I go up, I'm probably not going to come back. So I went down. So when I came back to base camp, I felt like I could have probably pushed myself a little bit further. You know, when you have this... What's the English word? This remorse. Like FOMO. Yeah, FOMO sort of. But...

I was talking to a behavioral therapist to help me out from this despair. And he said that, Fred, you know that it doesn't really matter how high goals you put and you set and you actually achieve unless you have decided what is enough.

And when I came back in 2006, I remember when I came to the same spot that I turned around the previous year, you probably seen Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam is leaving Shire. And they're at the Pettic where Sam is stopping suddenly and Frodo, what's up? And Sam looks terrified and says that,

If I take one more step, I will be the furthest I've ever been from Shire. And I think I had that kind of a feeling when I was standing there. It was almost bigger of a sensation and jubilant than getting to the summit itself. It felt like very victorious. And it was such a relief taking that step.

Because I pictured in my head that this step, it would take so much effort. But in fact, when I did it, it was the easiest thing I ever done in my life. And I took another step and another step and it was easy. So it's interesting how we have this self-limiting ideas and concepts in their head that dictates what is hard and what is easy. And I think that that sometimes prevent us from reaching our goals.

Well, if I learn one thing today and reading the podcast is there's more difficult mountains to climb than Everest for sure. But it is the one. It is Everest. It's a bucket list item for so many people. And have you seen that photo of the giant line of people that came out? I think it was this year or last year. Every year there's a new line. There's a new photo with even more people.

And when we were reading the podcast and talking about the queue, the line at the bottleneck and how that was a big problem, I remember that photo of Everest being like, you're up in this area that is, I'm assuming that's in the death zone as well, this area where it's very hard to survive and people are stuck waiting because there is a problem or there's too many people or whatever it is. And that must be just like the decision you made must have been a very hard one. Well, at the time it was the easiest decision

decision in the world. Because if it wouldn't, it would have jeopardized my success in coming back alive. So I think that the easy decision should be the hardest decision. I think there's a samurai saying that every hard decision in life, you should take in seven breaths. And I think that accounts and applies to mountaineering as well. Because imagine if you would be at this very

exposed and precarious spots, you wouldn't want to sit there for half an hour, one hour, trying to calculate by very intricate equations what the right decisions is. This has to be momentarily.

You need to know what to do immediately and you have to follow that through. So that's what I did. And when I came down, you have all kinds of stupid things that pops up in your brain and you have those voices that tells you, well, I shouldn't turn around. Maybe I've had enough energy. I could have pushed it on. These are second thoughts. But for me, I've learned over the years that

You know, turning around should never be something that troubles your ego. It should be ego-free. And turning around should never be questioned. And Dalai Lama once said that if there is doubt, there is no doubt. And I think it's true. If your gut says that you have to go down, I think that you should listen to it.

In life, love, and mountaineering, your gut usually knows what to do, right? And also when it comes to food. That is very true, too. So you've climbed a whole bunch of 8000ers, but what makes K2 such a difficult climb?

Well, of many reasons. First of all, the access to the actual mountain is not as trafficked and as easy as Mount Everest. And then you have the faces. K2 is more of a prominent peak with much steeper faces. There's actually no line that is very...

very easy to get to the summit.

Whereas Mount Everest has two lines that is quite flat and it's quite easy to access. The northeast ridge on Everest, you have a couple of steps, rocky steps, and on the south side you have treasuries and also a very intimidating ice field called the Kumbu Ice Field, which should not be underestimated. But apart from that, it's pretty much straightforward.

And then last but not least, you have the weather. And weather is very unpredictable in K2. I mean, there's bad weather and you have worse weather. So there is actually not many days where you have stable weather front where you can climb K2. And with Everest, on the other hand, you have a typical weather window before the monsoon sets in.

And this weather window gives you this unique chance with low winds, low precipitation to get to the summit and back. It's almost like a Swiss watch. You can actually set your watch on it and it will happen in May. Whereas in K2, it's not that easy.

It's going back to some of the numbers you said. You said Everest was, the odds have been about one in 25 people don't make it down. And for K2, it was about one in four, right? Those are the numbers. So after you did Everest, what made you want to slim those odds down to something like one in four? Yeah.

That sounds very... I feel like an idiot when you put it that way. I know you have a good answer, that's why I'm asking. Well, if I counterattack with saying that I'm a better climber, then I really dig my own grave. And I don't think so. I don't think that I'm better than anyone else. I know that I train a lot harder than many climbers.

I do a lot of preparations, which are, I think, crazy. I prepare myself one year in beforehand. And normally that's four to five hours of training every day.

And I run maybe three, four hours. I go up with big bottles, 20 liter bottles of water, and I empty them at the top of some mountains. Then I run down and I do it repeatedly over and over again until I gain several thousand meters.

And then I'd go to the gym in the afternoon and then I work as well. And I meditate, I stretch, I think about what I'm eating all the time, thinking about my calorie intake and what I eat.

And I practice all the climbing techniques. So I camp, I climb, I go to the Alps, I go to Norway, everything in order to try to perfect my body, my mind, in order to be the perfect machine to grow up on these mountains. And I think that I owe it to myself because I cannot live with that.

The fact that I have a very supportive family that always helped me and I would not stand the thought of going to a mountain unprepared when they helped me that much. And then I blame and can be blamed on an accident or something that puts me in danger because I was not prepared enough. I could not live with that. So I prepared myself extensively.

And I was adamant in my approach. It was, you know, there was no compromise, no compromise. I know that sometimes it does not pay off because weather is just so bad and there's no plausibility for any safe ascent. So we just bail. But then again, imagine yourself being on a mountain. You have the great weather.

you still can't make it because you're not fit enough. I would never forgive myself for that. Or imagine yourself being on a mountain, you end up in a situation where it's a rescue and you don't know how to do the rope work safely. I would never forgive myself for being in that situation. It's this unforgiving and redundant approach where if you can do something about it,

you ought to do something about it. And the rest you leave up to God or Inshallah. Inshallah, that's right.

This was part one of our two-part interview with high-altitude mountaineer Frederick Strang. In the next episode, we'll speak to Frederick about his memories climbing K2 in 2008 when disaster struck in the death zone. If you'd like to learn more about this event, we highly recommend the book The Summit, How Triumph Turned to Tragedy on K2's Deadliest Days by Pat Falvey and Pemba Giljay-Sherpa and No Way Down by Graham Boley.

We also recommend the documentary, The Summit, directed by Nick Ryan. I'm your host, Mike Corey. Peter Arcuni produced this episode. Brian White is our associate producer. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our executive producers are Stephanie Jentz and Marshall Louis. For Wondery.