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Show 25 November 2009 Russell Jacobs MD: Um-hum. Well, maybe it is that, you know, that ninety percent that doesn ' t see it as a lifestyle hasn't had that moment where they had to discover what they're capable of. Like it takes that moment. .. RJ: No, they haven't. No, they haven't, they haven't. It's a different feeling. It ' s, uh, it's pretty cool. [Russell laughs] I've had seven forced bivouacs in the wilderness where I haven't been, haven't been able to make it back to camp. MD: Um-huh. RJ: One of which was at 20, let's see, 18, 500 feet in the Andes on a ... on a mountain called, uh, Tocllaraju. And we were in a snowstorm ... MD: [Interrupting] Do you know how to spell that? RJ: Oh my gosh, I'd have to stab at it. T-A-K-L-A-R-A-U. MD: Okay. RJ: And it's in the, uh, Cordillera Blanca region, a hundred miles north of Lima, Peru. Uh , we were in that region to acclimatize to, uh ... we set up camp at 14,000 feet, and we were there for sixteen days. And climbed four peaks over 18,000 feet and ... to acclimatize to do Huascaran, which is the ultimate goal that we had for that trip. MD: Um-huh. So you had to do a forced bivouac? RJ: We were in a snowstorm. Um, we were off-route, completely off-route. It was ... there was four of us, uh two parties of two. I was the lead climber on that, and, uh , I never did see the fourth climber until we got to a point where we actually spent the night. It was a full-on whiteout. At that altitude and, being that it was a whiteout, I didn't think I needed any eye protection. I was snow blind all the next day. Um, when we finally reached the ... a plateau on the ridge, we climbed an ice face that was probably 5 |
