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Podcast #150: Business Lessons Learned in the Dead Zone on Mt. Everest, with Dean Cardinale
In this episode, we talk with professional adventurer Dean Cardinale about achieving big goals by taking informed risks, and how you can apply the same knowledge to leverage your own business aspirations.
Dean Cardinale
Dean Cardinale  is an avid mountain climber, outdoors enthusiast, and adventure lover, the founder of World Wide Trekking, and the President and Founder of Human Outreach Project. He has climbed and led expeditions to North America, Central America, Africa, Europe, South America, and the Himalayas, including summiting Mt. Everest in 2005. He is the former president of Wasatch Backcountry Rescue, where he served for over a decade, he serves as the U.S. representative to the International Commission of Alpine Rescue, is an avalanche instructor with the American Avalanche Association, an avalanche forecaster for Snowbird Ski Resort, a level-III certified US Sailing Captain, and author of the book: Inspired: Lessons Learned from a Life of Adventure. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with his wife, Alison, and their three dogs—Cruizer, Marty, and Spike.
You can follow Dean on LinkedIn.
Thanks to Ruby Receptionists and Clio for sponsoring this episode!
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Transcript
This transcript was prepared by Rev.com.
Announcer: Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, with Sam Glover and Aaron Street. Each week, Lawyerist brings you advice and interviews, to help you build a more successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market.
And now, here are Sam and Aaron.
Sam Glover: Hi, I’m Sam Glover.
Aaron Street: And I’m Aaron Street, and this is episode 150 of The Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk network. Today, we’re talking with Dean Cardinale about business lessons learned in the dead zone of Mount Everest.
Sam Glover: That sounds pretty badass, doesn’t it?
Aaron Street: Totally.
Sam Glover: Yeah, it is pretty badass. Today’s podcast is sponsored by Clio, Legal Practice Management software. Clio makes running your law firm easier, try it for free today at Clio.com.
Aaron Street: Today’s podcast is also by Ruby Receptionists, and it’s smart, charming receptionists who are perfect for small firms. Visit Callruby.com/lawyerist to get a risk-free trial with Ruby.
So way back in episode 18, we had an interview with our friend Shannon Hoagland, where you and she talked about creative networking tips. During that episode, part of the conversation was about one of your techniques, which is that you often, when meeting a new person and doing networking, highlight the fact that one of your passions and hobbies is winter camping.
Sam Glover: I don’t know if it’s a technique, technique.
Aaron Street: Tip? A thing you do?
Sam Glover: Thing I love to talk about, if given any excuse.
Aaron Street: Yeah, and part of the hook in episode 18 was about how it makes networking really easy when you have something interesting that you’re passionate about that you can fall back on when you’re making cold introductions to people you don’t know, and doing networking chitchat.
Sam Glover: And just to be clear, it’s not golf.
Aaron Street: Right. It’s interesting. So in episode 18 we’re talking about your passion/hobby of winter camping, and I happened to randomly sit next to Dean at a conference a couple of months ago and heard about some of his exploits of polar expeditions and climbing Kilimanjaro dozens and dozens of times. He had just, the day before, gotten back from the Everest based camp.
Sam Glover: That’s awesome.
Aaron Street: I was like, “Shit, this is a guy who both needs to be on our podcast and who Sam needs to meet.”
Sam Glover: Yeah.
Aaron Street: So that was kind of the impetus for bringing Dean on. He’s not a lawyer, you two aren’t going to talk about law. He’s going to talk about going to the North Pole and Everest and climbing to the tops of dangerous mountains and things like that, but with the hook of how that can relate to both how you think about the work you do in the world, and about using extreme sports as an example of achieving big goals in your life and how that can help you as an entrepreneur.
Sam Glover: Yeah, overcoming challenges is overcoming challenges. It kind of doesn’t matter … I mean, physical challenges are hard in a different way than business challenges, but the concepts stretch.
Aaron Street: In this episode of our law practice podcast, we will be talking about climbing Mount Everest. Literally.
Sam Glover: We are. Actually, we are going to talk about that and other badassery that Dean has engaged in, and, if anything, you’ll see that I’m a little bit shy talking to him because I think he’s cool. He’s super cool.
That said, here’s my conversation with Dean. Quick warning, my audio during this interview is pretty terrible. I decided to work from home during some bad weather and use an old mic, and that was a bad decision. Paul, our audio editor, has done his best with it, but it is still pretty bad on my end. I really enjoyed the interview, so I hope that comes across despite the bad quality on my end.
Dean Cardinale: Okay, my name’s Dean Cardinale. I am an adventurer from Salt Lake City, Utah. I’ve worked the last 25 years as an avalanche forecaster at Snowbird Ski Resort here in Utah, along with mountain rescue in the Wasatch Mountains here in Utah. I also am an international mountaineer and guide, and have guided expeditions and trips all over the world. I operate and own a company called World Wide Trekking, where we take people on adventures in Nepal and Tanzania, Africa, South America, pretty much worldwide, as well as a non-profit where we give back to the local areas as we travel.
Sam Glover: I’m so glad you’re here with us and “adventurer” is the coolest sounding job title I can think of. When you post a job description do you post, “Seeking adventurers?”
Dean Cardinale: You know what’s funny, I do a lot of talks for different organizations and groups, and I was doing one a few years ago for the Wilderness Medical Society, and I looked at the program; It had all these speakers and I was the only that didn’t say “MD,” [inaudible 00: 04: 57] and my name said, “Dean Cardinale, Adventurer.” I thought that was pretty funny.
Sam Glover: That’s awesome. That is so cool. I mean, you’ve written about your adventures in a book called, “Inspired.”
Dean Cardinale : Yes.
Sam Glover : You wrote it with the idea that risk-taking and being careful about it can inform business and risk-taking in business, and I thought that was really accurate, because most people who’ve gone on adventures kind of feel the same way. But maybe we should start by talking about the nature of risk and the difference between how adventurers are perceived as risk-takers and what it actually means in the day-to-day.
Dean Cardinale : I think one of the things that’s important in an adventuresome lifestyle, and even in a career or job that is risky in a physical sense, meaning if there’s an accident I could be harmed, killed, my partners, my team, whoever I’m working with, the consequences are really large. That’s what we try to do is we do the research, get properly educated on being able to make good decisions in a natural environment, most of the time; then deciding what is the acceptable amount of risk that you’re willing to take. And if there is an accident, what are the consequences of your action? Is it just a setback or am I going to have a catastrophe here and have a really bad accident? So trying to identify what the consequences are, you can make a lot of mistakes, you just can’t make the big one.
Sam Glover : You’re a skier, and a mountaineer, and a general adventurer. I like to winter camping, and I think about winter camping as a little bit more like a chess match with the environment, in contrast to flying down a mountain, which is much more like blood rushing in your head, the thrill. There’s a planning and risk-taking and assessment that goes into it beforehand, but everything happens very quickly; whereas, I imagine when you’re climbing Mount Everest the thing that kills you is a decision you made hours or days ago, not necessarily the thing that you decided right then and there. Does that make sense?
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, and I think when you focus on your bigger objective and you are climbing Mount Everest, for me, I summited Mount Everest on the 67th day after I set out from Utah. You have to stay focused for a really long period of time, and during the more hazardous parts of the climb, the Khumbu Icefall, the [inaudible 00: 07: 30], the upper elevations. We’re talking about a month and a half or so of climbing on the mountain itself.
I like to look at it in two ways. Number one, I set out an objective for the day. I’m trying to get from camp one to camp two, say, and then I think about all the obstacles that are in my way, all the hazards that could come up; then, I focus on the moment in front of me. I’m totally focused on what I’m doing now, so I don’t have distractions that make it so I don’t recognize a hazard that comes up. In the mountains I think, and it can be applied a lot places, a plan can be your worst enemy, because having too much set into a plan means that my focus is just to get to the next camp, it’s not to recognize the crevasses that are around me and the obstacles that I have to avoid. So we have to deviate from our plan in the mountains a lot, because, like winter camping for you, because the weather forecast says one thing and now it’s blowing 40 miles an hour or 60 miles an hour, I’m going to adjust to the environment around me constantly.
Sam Glover : I got a chance to listen to Chris Hadfield, the astronaut, recently talk about how the plan missions. He said, basically all they talk about is failure. And then for each failure that they anticipate, for each thing that could go wrong, they come up with a contingency plan. That sounded, to me, a lot like what you described doing on Everest, or on any mountain. But especially on Everest it really came home to me, because I didn’t realize this before, but you spend, what, like 24, 48 hours in the death zone, meaning the oxygen is just so thin that your brain can’t function properly. So you’re trying to have this chess match with the mountain when you can’t think properly. What’s that like?
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, you basically chalk that up to years and years of experiences that you’ve gone through, and all those failures. Then on the mountain, oftentimes the day before, constantly I’m … and in my life in general, but you’re playing the what if game up there. So I go through this game like, “If this happens, I’m going to do this. And if this happens, I’m going to do that,” while I’m in a clear state of mind, so when you get up into a hypoxic state where you’re not coming up … for lack of a better word, you’re not really up with any great ideas up there. You better have pre-thought about them, you better have maybe had some experience on past climbs in other situations that you can apply to the situation you’re in at the moment, and make a good decision.
Sam Glover : You use a term that I’ve used, and that I’m sure I’ve heard lots of outdoor enthusiasts use, which is you have to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Because there’s nothing comfortable about being in a hypoxic state at the top of a mountain when everything around you is trying to kill you, but you have to be able to just be cool and make level-headed decisions.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, and I think that that’s really important up there. It comes into play so much. I say it to so many people that I guide, “Mountaineering is the art of being uncomfortable, or being comfortable being uncomfortable.” It’s really about a patience game. It’s really about knowing, say if I have a headache at a high altitude because of a lack of pressure in the air, that with time it’s going to go away and I just can focus on my breathing and hydrating, little inconveniences; or being very cold, or getting to the tent exhausted and having to set up your tent, and make snow into water, and then heat the water up to drink, and then make some soup or something to eat, and things like that. It’s just this constant battle with an uncomfortable surrounding. I think the more you do it, the more you can enjoy knowing the ultimate challenge comes with that. And as you get through it, it’s going to be a great thing that you accomplished.
Sam Glover : It’s like training for resilience, I guess.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah. You really have to be … I couldn’t agree more about the failure aspect of things. It’s the minor setbacks, minor failures, and in your mind … I always think of failures as an opportunity to have learned something, and an opportunity to try again.
Sam Glover : Well, I was gonna say, so you started two business. I’m wondering if you see the parallels. I assume you see the parallels between being comfortable, being uncomfortable, due to the environment, and being uncomfortable because of the business risk you’re taking, or the money situation that you find yourself in, or whatever.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, and I did start my business … I’d been a ski patrolman and avalanche forecaster for 15 years, and had been guiding for other agencies. Like a lot of business that starts, they start from frustration of thinking you can do it a better way. I started my business in my employee housing dorm room up at Snowbird, and it was uncomfortable at first. I was not a business man, so to say, but I had guests that wanted to go on trips, I wanted to offer them something more.
In the beginning, I didn’t much so I didn’t have much to lose with my business. But as I grew and then moved into a home office, and I was still working all by myself, and now I have a team of about ten people, and a large office space, with different jobs, then that was when it really got more uncomfortable for me, because I wasn’t as used to running a business and a business team. But I thought of them more as one of my groups, expedition groups, guided groups, that need information, direction, encouragement, and an idea of what we’re all trying to accomplish together. It’s kinda come around.
Sam Glover : I suppose that’s sort of how we all start, right? We have an idea, but it turns out that running a business is not the same thing as what we developed our expertise in, and that transition is uncomfortable.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, it was very uncomfortable. It was definitely met with setbacks and some frustrations, and a lot of uncertainty. I’d say the time when it started to get the most uncomfortable for me was about two years ago, where I started to take a more advisory consulting job at the ski resort that was kind of my day job, and then left that and now I consult there. I took on my business as my full-time career. I had had people working for me, but I was still kinda double dipping. I was still doing both.
Sam Glover : Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean Cardinale : That was uncomfortable, because then all of a sudden it was like, “Wow, this is my total focus now is my two businesses.” It’s been fun. I guess the one thing more me is I enjoy the excitement of uncertainty, and trying to figure it out.
Sam Glover : We didn’t dive into this at the beginning, but the two businesses are World Wide Trekking and the Human Outreach Project, and they kind of weave together it sounds like. Maybe you could talk just a little bit about both of those and, especially, how the Human Outreach Project comes out of the trekking company.
Dean Cardinale : So World Wide Trekking is an adventure travel company. When I started it after a long mountaineering career, I wanted to make it an opportunity-based company for people to come on trips from California to Connecticut and everywhere in between, all over the world, sign up for one of our trips and go climb Kilimanjaro or trek to Mount Everest base camp; do an adventure challenge for them that would be guided and they could go on these amazing trips and accomplish great goals.
Because of my experience traveling overseas, I had seen all too often the places where people struggle with everyday life in Nepal, and Africa, and areas South America. I thought that if I was going to be bringing over these groups of adventurer travelers, that we should do something as a business to give back to those local communities. Now we run a lot of trips on Kilimanjaro and Tanzania, Africa on safaris, and we have an orphanage there and four acres of land. We have a school lunch program where we feed 850 kids lunch every single day. In Nepal, we just cut the ribbon on a new medical clinic in a area that treks through to the Annapurna region. Down in South America, where we trek in the Andes, we opened two computer centers at schools this last year.
So they kind of go hand-in-hand. I really think that we should give back to the areas that we’re doing our business in.
Sam Glover : Yeah, I assume you sleep quite well knowing what you’ve accomplished. That sounds really awesome.
Dean Cardinale : It’s been really cool. It’s been such a blessing in disguise. I mean, in the beginning I found myself formulating these relationships with my overseas contacts and communities. You want to do something for them, and knowing in the beginning I could bring … I started out by bringing two duffle bags of supplies for every group I would take. Then, because of certain areas I found to maybe not distribute the supplies that they should, or take advantage of it, that’s when I started to look to buy land to build the orphanage in Tanzania or take more solid programs on.
Right now, over the holidays … we’re a Utah based company and we delivered holiday Thanksgiving food supplies to Veterans in the area, as well as gift cards to Wal Mart, and they’ll get another supply of food during the week before Christmas holiday. As well, we’re doing twelve sponsored families for kids that would not celebrate the holiday over Christmastime if they did not have some outside support. So we also have programs in the US.
Sam Glover : I’m curious, because, of course, I read the book. I learned a little bit about you and I’m like [inaudible 00: 18: 35], “What if I want to go to Kilimanjaro or I want to go to Everest base camp?” What does a trip to Kilimanjaro typically run, price wise?
Dean Cardinale : Runs for Kilimanjaro, about $4900. That includes everything from the time you show up in Tanzania, until the time we drop you back off. So it’s lodging before for a couple nights with all your meals, permits, guide team, all of the mountain facilities to climb on Kilimanjaro. Afterwards, we spend another night and have celebration dinner. Oftentimes, people go on a safari after that.
Sam Glover : Wait, does that include airfare or do I have to get myself there?
Dean Cardinale : No, it doesn’t include international airfare. Whenever we have a trip where you have domestic flights, like helicopter rides or charters to get into a landing strip, like in Nepal, then that would be all included. Basically, I tried to make it so everything … usually a profession or somebody who signs up for one of our trips, can get the gear lift, get our training plan, and consult back and forth with them as they prepare over months before the trip, and then when they show up on the trip they are properly geared up. We’ve given the direction on training and consulting, and then when they show up, they simply meet the other twelve or fourteen people that are on the adventure, and everything is transportation, lodging, all their meals, permits, everything is covered. They can just enjoy the adventure and focus on the elements that they’re going to be dealing with along the way.
Sam Glover : Well, I know what I’m asking for for Christmas. That’s not as much as I thought it was going to be.
Dean Cardinale : I gotta say that I am so lucky to see … first, I see so many groups of strangers become great friends. You can imagine when you go on a trip … say you and a spouse or a buddy or somebody come on a trip, and you don’t know the other ten people on the trip, by the time you’re halfway or though that trip or experience, you’ve made new lifelong friendships there. And I see it again and again, and also have the opportunity to help people challenge themselves. The art of guiding is pushing someone beyond what they think they can do, but not beyond what they’re capable of doing. So it’s that balance right there that helps them determine who they really are themselves. You have to kind of read them and see what kind of output they’re going to give you, and push them right to their limits, but also make sure you’re not pushing them, I guess, over the edge.
Sam Glover : I’ve been out a couple of Outward Bound trips, and on the first one that I went on my instructor talked about it like the rings on the stump of a tree. Every time you try something new and push yourself to have a new experience, it’s like you’re a tree growing a little bit, and you’re adding a ring to the tree. And that’s your comfort zone, and the bigger your comfort zone gets, the more comfortable you’ll be doing anything else in your life. But you’re right, the people that you expand your comfort zone with, that’s a bonding thing that you just take with you.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, and that goes back to that being comfortable, being uncomfortable. The more experiences that you have, the more times I’m up in a tent making water out of snow, and in my bag trying to stay warm and doing all that stuff, the more it just seems like adventure to me and it’s … you get comfortable with that element that you’re in.
Sam Glover : So we need to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and when we come back, Dean, I’m going to ask you whether or not it’s possible to burn snow.
Dean Cardinale : Okay, that sounds good.
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Sam Glover : So we’re back, and Dean, like I mentioned, I love to go winter camping. I’ve been going for years. Somewhere along the way, somebody decided that you have to be careful when you melt snow, because you might burn it, which I maintained is complete ludicrous, but I think you probably melted a lot more snow than me so, I’m curious, can you burn snow?
Dean Cardinale : You know, I think no matter how bad a cook you are I would have a hard time burning snow. I can say that there is somewhat of an art form of making snow into water, taking the dense snow pieces and not making your water pot too cold, [inaudible 00: 24: 46] you just wait a lot longer. But I don’t think you’d burn it, no. If we did in those environments, you’d probably still drink it.
Sam Glover : Probably wouldn’t mind.
Dean Cardinale : You wouldn’t mind so much.
Sam Glover : You were telling a story about yourself, which resonated with me on a number of level. Am I pronouncing Cho Oyu right?
Dean Cardinale : Cho Oyu, yeah.
Sam Glover : Yeah, maybe you could just talk about … maybe you could just tell a little bit about the story of what happened and how you found yourself in a weird position, and it lead to you mentioning in the book hazardous attitudes.
Dean Cardinale : Okay, well I’d say one of the things that’s interesting about the mountains is we all know of Mount Everest and Kilimanjaro, but there’s so many other mountains out there, like Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world. It’s 27,000 feet. I was privately guiding that mountain, and after about five weeks, a month or so on the climb, my client had fallen sick. He was gonna need to go down and go home. As we were packing up around camp, it wasn’t a life threatening illness, but he couldn’t go on to continue the climb. We were packing up around camp, and I said … he had been with me a number of times before. I said, “Hey, I could walk you back out to the pickup for the vehicle. What do you think if I stay here and finish this climb off?” At that point, he had been a client that had become a good friend as well, and he was like, “No, you should do it. You’re here. We put the time in. We’re acclimatized, I was ready. We had a all of our facilities ready.”
So I went back up and I was just going to solo the rest of the climb, got back to base camp. Well, that year it had been a really high avalanche danger on the mountain. They had a weak layer and it kept snowing. We kept having numerous avalanches that were occurring on the mountain. I’ve worked with the avalanches a long time, and I think, nonetheless, you kinda get that tunnel vision like, “I’m here. I spent time, put the effort in.” I started to work my way from base camp up to camp one. I worked my way up to camp two, and as I got up to camp two, it was still quite unstable out and there was a lot going on. There was another huge avalanche came down, took out a team. It’s when I really had that realization … and it’s funny because I teach this to so many people during avalanche courses and different mountain courses, the hazardous attitudes.
It goes back to the fact that the mountain, just like life or business or so many things, the mountain doesn’t care that I’m a guide or seasoned professional. The mountain doesn’t care that I have a family at home that would miss me if I was killed. There’s no feeling there, from the mountain. You just have to react with it. So the hazardous attitude, I think in any mistake that’s ever been made … in my national environment settings, I would say that those attitudes fall into having made at least one or maybe more of these attitudes. Do you want me to go down the list of hazardous attitudes?
Sam Glover : Yeah, actually I think it’s useful, because when I’m reading that story … I am not a mountain climber. I have not had the level of adventures you have, but I had a time when I was … I tend to be the leader of the group in the boundary waters, and it was negative 30 degrees out and I was really committed to it, and I started recognizing some of them in myself. I was getting cold to the point where I was making bad decisions. I thought I was making good decisions, I wanted to go. I felt like we had to just stop and build a fire to get warm. You know, fire does not warm you up at negative 30. But fortunately, while we were stomping around, I warmed, came to my sense, and realized what a dangerous set of decisions I was making. As you were going through the list of five, that’s the event that I often think of, where I’m like, “Yeah, I totally defeated myself with those attitudes.” So I think it’d be useful to kind of run through them.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, so that’s a good example. They’re in no particular order, as far as they go. But I’d say that’d be more of a overconfidence or macho attitude that can get in the way of people when you’re guiding, or when you’re in charge of other people. They’re expecting you to give them the result. If I’m guiding people in powder snow situation and there’s an avalanche hazard, it’s up to me to recognize that maybe I’m not going to give them the best ski day because of the hazard that’s out there. So being overconfident or a macho attitude, we could call that number one. That could get you in trouble real easily.
Another one would be invulnerability, so thinking that it can’t happen to you. You know, “Bad things happen to other people. Oh, I’ll be fine. Can’t happen to me.” So feeling invulnerable to the situation.
The next one, impulsivity or being impulsive. So going quicker doesn’t generally make it safer for us. Sometimes there’s time to move fast, and sometimes there’s time to take pause. Being too impulsive doesn’t make it any more safe.
Anti-authority. I think these are the preset guidelines that we all live our life by, or maybe a different business is run by. Rules are generally and protocols are generally put in place to give good guidance. Recognizing your authority, recognizing the protocols and abiding by them is really important.
Lastly, resignation. This does happen in the mountains, where people get up in a bad storm, a bad situation. We were talking before, you mentioned my time on Denali in Alaska, where I was crawling around on my hands and knees trying to find my way off the mountian, could have easy gave up to resignation and said, “This is it. I can’t find my way. I give up.” So not giving up.
Sam Glover : But you said in the book, “You don’t get to give up. You die.”
Dean Cardinale : That’s it. You pay the ultimate … going back to consequences. That’s the ultimate consequence. You’re not going to lose a bunch of money, you’re not going to have some people get upset with you because it didn’t work out. You’re going to die. You pay the ultimate consequence for your action. I think the hazardous attitudes, as we go down they’re resignation, anti-authority, impulsive, invulnerability, or overconfidence. All of those, first of all, have to be challenged. Every time that you want to keep moving and move quickly, you can’t say, “Oh, I should slow down.” You have to challenge authority, right? You have to ask questions and you have to ask why. You have to push every bit of these to their limit, but then, I think, you need to recognize when it’s going too far; any single one of these hazardous attitudes, when you’re pushing it too far. Then it’s really important to, as I did on Cho Oyu, break the chain.
Sam Glover : Yeah.
Dean Cardinale : You say, “I recognize that I need to go down, else I’m going to pay the ultimate consequence for my actions here.” So recognizing it is really important, and I think it goes back to like I was saying about having a plan. If you have a plan and you follow your plan too precisely and you’re not willing to be flexible, and make small changes, and kind of dance with the plan, then there’s a good chance that you’re not going to get to the end of that idea or carry out that whole plan.
Sam Glover : It’s almost like, one of the things I kept thinking about as I’m reading about you deciding to abandon the trip is the [inaudible 00: 33: 05] fallacy, right? The idea that you’ve come this far, so you might as well finish it out.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah.
Sam Glover : Or that you’re so invested, you might as well go the rest of the way. I could feel you making that decisions as you were with your wife, actually, on your honeymoon, and you’re close to the summit and you’re just like, “Maybe I’ve lost sight of the whole point here.”
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, and I think that brings up a great point. We call it summit fever. You’re 500 feet for the summit, but if I’m behind my turnaround time, there’s a bunch of things that … maybe the weather’s changing, and when we get to the summit on a mountain climb you’re only halfway there. Your goal is to get down. With my wife on my honeymoon, the whole thing with the realization was, “Enjoy the journey.” I tell every person that comes on one of our trips, “You’re going to stand on the top of Kilimanjaro and take your new Facebook photo for 15, 20 minutes or so. We’re going to be at this for seven days. You want to enjoy all the moments each day and stop and take photographs and talk with your friend on the trail and walk, and just take it all in, enjoy the journey.” I think that that’s so important. It goes back, again, to being comfortable being uncomfortable, and knowing that if you can enjoy the journey all that stuff not going to feel so, so bad.
Sam Glover : Thanks so much for your stories and your insights.
Dean Cardinale : My pleasure.
Sam Glover : If people want to learn more about World Wide Trekking and maybe find the summit of Kilimanjaro with you, where do they go?
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, visit our website at www.wwtrek.com; so that’s World Wide Trekking. You can always give us a phone call here in the office, 801-943-0264.
Sam Glover : Awesome. Thanks so much for being with us today, Dean.
Dean Cardinale : Yeah, thanks for having me it’s my pleasure.
Aaron Street: Make sure to catch next week’s episode of The Lawyerist Podcast, by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast app. And please leave a rating to help other people find our show. You can find the notes for today’s episode on Lawyerist.com/podcast.
Sam Glover : The views expressed by the participants are their own, and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you.
Podcast #150: Business Lessons Learned in the Dead Zone on Mt. Everest, with Dean Cardinale was originally published on Lawyerist.com.
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wayneooverton · 7 years
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5 thoughts I had while horse trekking in Kyrgyzstan
Without a doubt the best way to experience the mountains and backcountry of Kyrgyzstan is on horseback. And this is coming from someone who isn’t a big horseback rider.
Yes, I love adventure. Sure, I love animals. I mean, yeah, horses are cool. But am I a tried and tested rider with heaps of experience in the saddle? Nope. In fact, I am still pretty skeptical borderline total scaredy cat when it comes to riding things that have a mind of their own ever since the Great Camel Fiasco of 2013. Somethings just leave a scar.
But in spite of my fears, I yearn for adventure and overcoming challenges while traveling even more. And if there is a place that couldn’t be more suited for that, it’s Kyrgyzstan.
A country that pretty much defines the cliche “hidden gem” Kyrgyzstan is standing up now and just asking to be noticed. A growing modern corner of Central Asian that is a melting pot of languages, cultures and histories, while tourism is only starting to grow there, the traditions of the nomads remains strong.
And nothing is quite so central to Kyrgyz culture quite like the horse.
Once you get into the wilds of Kyrgyzstan, you have pretty much two options – your feet or a horse. I initially was planning on doing a multi-day hike but ended up arriving with bronchitis, and luckily was able to switch to a horse trek instead.
See you can do that there. Trails are trails, and the pony is still a very much acceptable form of transport. Hell, even when we are driving out of Bishkek you would see a road worker canter by you on the road carrying a shovel in one hand. Watching Kyrgyz people ride blows me away. They are the most incredible horseback riders; nothing with throw them off and they are so good at making it look effortless.
I was no stranger to long horse treks after spending a month riding with the eagle hunters in remote western Mongolia in 2014. Just like riding a bike, right? Right???
Here are some of my favorite and most memorable thoughts I had back in the saddle horse trekking in Kyrgyzstan this summer. Enjoy!
25 photos that will inspire you to visit Kyrgyzstan
1. How is this so amazing?
If I’m being totally honest here, I was actually a bit nervous the day we started our horse trek into the mountains. The original plan was to hike for three days, but instead we swapped last minute to riding because I couldn’t walk 10 feet without hacking up a lung.
After a mellow morning at our yurt camp at Kara-kyz in the Jerghez Gorge, we managed to acquire horses and porters and we were off. As you do.
It was just like riding a bike! Even after years of not riding, it felt like it all came back to me. I had forgotten how much I loved riding. I had the biggest grin on my face as we made our way up into the mountains, further and further from civilization.
Completely lost in my own thoughts, it was the happiest I had been in a long time.
2. Is that marijuana?
We rode through colorful fields of flowers, through lush green valleys with towering mountains in the distance. It smelled divine. I was in heaven.
Then my inner monologue about finding my true purpose in life and joyous reverie was broken by my friend saying “that looks a lot like marijuana. Wait that’s definitely weed. Ditch weed.”
Turns out weed grows wild in the remote valleys of Kyrgyzstan. Who knew?
12 things you probably didn’t know about Kyrgyzstan
3. Shit, my ass hurts
After hours of trail riding through the mountains we start to climb up to a huge wide open valley at the end of the day. Smoke trails rise in the distance from the shepherd’s huts and we begin to see other horses in the distance.
Full of confidence and joy, I kicked my little horse into action and cantered/galloped into the camp with the biggest smile on my face. We camped with local shepherds that night.
Fuck guys, it gelt so amazing.
Til I climbed out of the saddle and basically fell over. Man, riding hurts the bum and the knees. Takes some getting used to.
4. OMG am I dead?
We spent the next day winding our way up into the mountains, making our way towards some of the alpine lakes, crossing many rivers and weaving our way through the valleys. It was a big day. I’ll also disclose that helmets aren’t really a thing in remote Central Asia.
Trail riding in Kyrgyzstan is mixed terrain. It’s not really even a trail. At one point we were heading up over slippery mud  rocks and my horse stumbled. I think it caused the saddle bags to slip because a few seconds later my saddle slid off depositing me on the rocks.
I landed on my elbow and ribs. Blind pain, white light, am I dead? You know that sharp pain you get as a kid when you hurt yourself during recess and you cry; it was like that. Deep breaths, don’t cry in front of the men. Ok, I can move my arm. I’m not dead. Ok, I’m alive, I can keep going. Surely I won’t fall off again.
Guys, I fell off again.
The very next day too. And that time it was totally my fault; I accidentally led my horse into a mud pit avoiding more slippy mud rocks and I flew over her head into the mud. At that point my horse had had enough of me and bolted clear across the valley through a bog.
Blink, blink, ok I’m not dead but I was upset and that time I threw a bit of a tanty. I mean, who falls off daily? Fucking hell, someone teach me how to stay on a horse in the mud.
5. When can I do this again?
For me horse trekking in Kyrgyzstan is the epitome of a true adventure. It may not seem like it but for me it was really challenging, not something inherently easy or that I was fearless doing, which means once you do it, it feels all the sweeter.
For me, true joy in travel comes from making me do things that are hard, learning new skills and overcoming fears. That’s what I’m all about.
Even though I’m a complete and total liability on a horse apparently, I still had an amazing time, with crazy highs and lows and before we even finished I was thinking, damn where can I do this next?
I guess I really did love it.
Have you ever considered doing a horse trek? Do you enjoy overcoming personal fears and challenges? Is Kyrgyzstan on your bucketlist? Spill!
Many thanks to USAID for hosting me in Kyrgyzstan, like always I’m keeping it real, all opinions are my own, like you could expect less from me. 
The post 5 thoughts I had while horse trekking in Kyrgyzstan appeared first on Young Adventuress.
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