Pat Callis is an icon of climbing history in North America. His first ascents and early attempts span the distance from Southern California to northern-Alberta, Canada. While this conversation may not seem relevant to the topic of fitness, I believe it is because endurance is fitness and Pat is still climbing (and well) at 84 years of age. Our discussion will, I hope, become an important moment in the oral history of climbing. We discuss the first ascents of the Great White Throne in Zion, the Lost Arrow Direct, the north face of Mount Robson and early attempts on the Emperor Face, and the development of ice in Hyalite Canyon, among other events that have influenced climbing, especially in Montana and Wyoming. 

When discussing the Great White Throne (climbed with Fred Beckey and Galen Rowell) I wondered aloud if that was the same face climbed in 1978 by George Willig in front of the Wide World of Sports cameras. That was actually Angel's Landing, which Willig climbed with Steve Matous, whereas I recalled him being alone. Mike Hoover ran the camera for that and the riggers were a Who's Who of the best rock climbers of the time. 

Later I mentioned the "Retro" ascent of the north face of the Eiger using original gear, and again, my memory was inaccurate regarding Stephan Siegrest wishing to use a modern kernmantle rope. From the photos here https://stephan-siegrist.com/adventures/eiger-retro#gallery, it appears they did use old, laid rope, like Goldline (or similar).

For a unique perspective on climbing and Pat and the impact he has had on individuals around him check out Blair's essay in the Journal on the NonProphet website. 

This conversation lasts 3hrs 45min. We could have broken it into two posts but that simply isn’t our style — full send, wherever you are. 

Michael and Mark start with a shallow dive into diet, then address the complicated vs simple conundrum and how people are first seduced by the apparently more effective nature of complicated or complex means only to learn — through actual experience — that the simple and fundamental are often more effective and reliable. And because this is current events podcast, aka the worst fitness podcast in the world ;) they discuss censorship, aka content moderation, freedom of speech, and the great entertainment theater involving Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter. Then, unafraid of their lack of expertise and certainty, they dig into politics and the patenting of synthetic foods before discussing the production and launch of POISON: Sermons on Suffering, the demand for which caught them wholly off guard. 

Michael and returning guest, Josh Tyler sit down for an intimate discussion on energy, the physical, metaphysical, and how the inexplicable world may map into the material. They talk about gender, sex, and energy as it relates to “old world” knowledge, and how creative energy is sexual energy, or possibly, how you mate might be how you do anything.

This podcast was originally recorded in June 2018, six months after Mark's first hip replacement. We are reposting this conversation, which focuses on injury, recovery, and return to activity in light of Mark's second hip replacement, and the fitness lost during a period of idleness enforced by a positive COVID test and seven-week moratorium on surgery imposed by the local hospital system.

Michael and Mark speak with Andy Dorais, an E.R. physician who has represented the U.S. in the Ski Mountaineering World Championships, holds the fastest known time on the White Rim Trail near Moab, and once traversed the summits of the SLC skyline: 65 miles and 30,000′ of elevation gain in a single push. Joining them is Brian Harder a physician assistant and endurance athlete (who appeared on Episode 4) to cover the topic of recovery from injury — both guests blew their ACLs last winter — and speak of their different recovery trajectories and return to sport. During the third hour of the podcast Brian and Mark discuss hip replacement and the aging athlete.

Aaron Mulkey is a climber and kayaker, likely best known for the hundreds of first ascents he has made in Wyoming and Montana, so we talk about climbing and the exploration required to discover new drainages where ice might form. But before that we speak about kayaking and whitewater and the dynamism of the medium compared to the relative calm nature of the climbing environment.

Early in the conversation I describe an encounter between Michael Dimitri, Steve Mascioli and a malnourished black bear (which I mistakenly refer to as a grizzly) on the Tokositna Glacier in Alaska. Following up with Michael recently, I learned some more details which we have posted in the NonProphet Journal as companion read for this conversation.

In a fascinating departure from the norm, which has people scouring the internet to learn about a route or its current condition, Aaron prefers to explore, to seek ephemeral routes that may not exist or be "in" rather than wanting all of the available knowledge the internet may provide before even leaving the car. "Most people don't chase the unknown because it seems scary but I'm going to choose that every single time. I mean, if you don't know anything about it so what is there to fear?" Knowing about something implies you have some control over it but that simply isn't true. He also prefers to climb new routes because, "repetition is in opposition with creativity."

Of course, we do speak about fitness, and how cardio is king because approaches in the South Fork of the Shoshone can involve hiking 5-6 miles with all of the gear, etc., "and I need to be 100% on the route after finally reaching it." Maintaining a year-round level of fitness is required to take advantage of ephemeral conditions — when routes can form and disappear in a matter of days one must always be ready. We also discuss the application of "artificial" training (in the gym) to sport-specific activity, avoiding overuse injuries, and diverse types of training (power and endurance and the combination of them), developing a good relationship with recovery, and mass gain vs. power-to-weight ratio.

We wrap up by addressing the concept of the psychological habit of injury that remains after the physical injury has been healed, the psychological habit of being injured and changing behavior, risk-tolerance, etc., and having to back off a bit to slowly recover confidence and the belief in one's ability to return to the highest level ... because continued negative reinforcement is not the answer.

And if you stick around until 3hrs 20min you'll hear Aaron describe doing a 2km Ski ERG TT at 8500' of altitude.

Aaron's website: https://coldfear.com

Michael and Burkey discuss the Space Program, which has become a creative solution applied at the point when training has become habit and automatic and rote or robotic adherence to a (useless) formulaic "plan". The program is also misunderstood, at times even by us so once again we dig into the heart of it to see whether can be any more clear this time around, or whether we have learned more about it by doing, creating, and experiencing training tasks that make us think, that cause psychological as well as physical change.

Sometimes the best things begin as a joke ... truth is often discovered in the humor and spite and "I'll show you" responses to the behavior or circumstances we witness all around us.

Michael and Mark discuss the forthcoming book, "POISON — Sermons on Suffering", which, if paper availability doesn't shut down production, should be available from NonProphet in late-April. They talk about the origin, the time-travel involved with revisiting and rewriting essays first published behind a paywall several years ago, and how to eat an elephant. The essays, or sermons, were published weekly, which allowed time to assimilate and digest. Having 141 of them available in a single, 456-page book is rather daunting.

The conversation flows to Michael's recent experience at the Tactical Games — a combination of fitness and shooting challenges — the previous weekend and lessons learned from it. Simple things like, "I laughed at myself because I was thinking about shooting while I was shooting and that lets me know that I'm not good at it," and, "sometimes you just need to be distracted from your own self-defeat." It's a quick conversation, and full of gems.

Mark and Blair sit down with Meesh Metcalf to talk about love, loss, navigating grief, the land, the future and how to hold on to what we love without suffocating its spirit or changing it permanently along the way.

Meesh was born, raised, worked and works with the land of Montana. She is a sixth generation Montanan, and jokes to the transplants she knows that she is their ‘token Montanan friend,’ while also being the first to acknowledge the land makes and creates but is not owned.

She is a yogi, a teacher and student, fiddle player, athlete, mountain runner, rancher, writer, and a healer. Each of these avenues of self are held together with her passion, fire, and easy directness. Her classes at Ekam Yoga are full and filled because of the fire and heart she emanates. Meesh is loyal to her people, to this special land, and to her own heart as she navigates life, loss, love and the ability to connect with others through it all.

She is a spitfire and a gift to the people in her life.

We recognize that we haven't explained clearly the motivation behind the Space Program or its utility so Michael and Mark sat down with Elodie to make the first attempt. We will release a second conversation on the same topic with Burkey in a few weeks. 

Despite a rough start and some loss of data during a complete website redesign, the program is a remarkable coalescence of creative and adaptable training examples. Now in month 18 of its existence, there are over 400 workouts with very little repetition and a lot of entertaining and demanding explorations. 

This episode was also a test-drive for the new studio design and video recording. We weren't completely happy with how the multi-camera video and lighting set-up so instead of broadcasting visually this one will remain audio-only, despite references to the contrary during the conversation. Stand by for video in the future, and perhaps a second podcast title under the NonProphet banner. 

We start our conversation with another anonymous guest on the topic of days we should “never forget” but already have, and workouts to commemorate them. This leads to a discussion of so-called Hero WODs and whether they honor appropriately, are simply self-aggrandizing or virtue-signaling, or actually offer the opportunity to sit with pain for an hour or two and remember that others have, and are hurting even more. We conclude by recognizing that, if every politician had to do a heinous workout for every service member who died, well, we might stop sending boys to war.

Then we move on to the geopolitical segment of our podcast to discuss how little we know or understand about the dispute between Russia and the West or the topic of security and, of course, Ukraine. We fully understand that we live in an era where one's world view may only be based on headlines, never on the details, examination or nuance. Michael does a nice job of tying group, political behavior to human nature, and even manages to overlay that on what he thinks Putin may be trying to accomplish.

With the warm-up concluded we explore the difference between whether people — citizens and their political representatives — actually want individuals to have choice or do they want to be told what to do? And who gets to do the telling? The hubris in the tone of the tellers, the certainty of their diktats contradicts nature. They think they are aware but mostly they (and we) aren’t, and considering this, it is tough to allow anyone to tell me what to do — or declare the correct thing to do — when they can’t explain why heart stem cells (or heart cells derived from IPSC stem cells) develop a beat in vitro ... just sayin'.

Learning to live a life of independent choice has much to do with awareness and the quality of the questions one asks, which influence your understanding of what you might or should do. Once you can ask appropriate questions you move from, “this happened to me and I have no agency” to “what can I do with this?” The answer(s), when you are able to hear them and willing to act upon them lead towards independence, away from dependence. That said, sometimes, perhaps more often than we realize, the cumulative effect of many choices made in the past prevent the choices we might make now from altering the course of your life — in the context of exposure to a pathogen, and otherwise. Watch, take care.