Tim Medvetz

speaker

173 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2025 last heard Apr 2025

Tim Medvetz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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We're Out of Time · How Tim Medvetz Turned Pain Into Purpose | The Heroes Project · 22 Apr 2025 podcast

Well, you know, I didn't want to show up to the mountain not knowing everything. I didn't want anybody to babysit me. Absolutely. I wanted to make sure that I showed up and I was a complete self-sufficient climber and knew everything, knew how to rescue people.

myself knew how to everything crampons and ice axes and you know reading avalanche control all that you know and so that took about three years of intense training and then i made my first attempt on everest in 2006 and then i got about 300 feet from the summit just missed it how do you get a football field

away from the peak and not make it?

Well, I was 275 pounds, six foot five, not the actual, you know, size of your average climber. Right. And then, you know, the higher you go in altitude, the more your body does no oxygen up there. And so the heavier you are, the less oxygen you have. So you don't really want to be that big. So I just got to the point where I was moving so slow and I just was running out of steam.

And then finally, you know, you got somebody down at base camp that's watching you and, you know, watching your oxygen levels and you got supplemental oxygen. And then, you know, after fighting a little bit about that, I decided to turn around.

But I want to know the psychology of it. Like, forget what those guys were doing. Like, in your head, you've just, how long did it take you to get to that point? Two months. No, no, no. You took two months to get to the top.

That's how long it takes?

Yeah, it's usually about anywhere from 40 to 60 days. Okay, so check this out. So you're two months up there. Yeah. And you're 300 feet away from the prize. Forget them. What are you doing internally? You must be going, I got to get there. And then you must have had to... There was something in that moment. Tell me about the conflict that you were having in those last moments.

Well, the big conflict was... You know, the doctor is telling you, I'll never walk again. I'll never ride a motorcycle again. But that would make you get to the top. Yeah. What's in the back of your head the whole time. So all these voices in your head saying you can't do this. You can't. It's not impossible. Blah, blah, blah. And then that's just driving you internally, right? Right.

But then there's the reality of, you know, being a seasoned climber and knowing when it's time to turn around. How long would it take to have done those last 300 feet? Last 300 feet at that altitude, just under 29,000 feet, you're moving every 30 feet is taking you probably about 10 minutes. So you're talking about a hundred minutes?

You're talking probably, I still had probably another two, three hours to go. An hour and a half by my math. Okay.

Especially at my size. An hour and 40 minutes. So you spent two months getting to that point. Yep. And then now understand, I know less than anything about this. So, but for the lay person, right? Yeah. We're like... hold on a second, you spent two months and you got another 100 minutes, an hour and 40 minutes. I need to know, dude, I need to know what happened in that moment for you to say,

Yeah, this is my life. I ain't doing it.

Well, a couple of things. First of all, there's an old saying in the climbing world that the summit's only halfway. You still got to get down, right? That is awesome. How do you, let's back up. How long do you stay at the top before you start going down? Depends on the weather, but generally 20, 30 minutes.

Get your photos, have a moment, you know, and then you got to hightail it because you got to get down. When you're on the summit ridge of Mount Everest, it's littered with frozen bodies. There's bodies everywhere up there. Dozens of them. You saw them? Oh, yeah. They're on the route. Like, there's tons of them. Okay, but if they're there, can't you just toss them down the hill?

People won't touch them because it's bad juju up there, but if they are close enough to a crevasse or the edge... We'll push them over. But most of them, you know, are, let's say, you know, 20 feet off the trail. And so what's the point? You're going to go over, just leave them alone. Right.

But the crazy thing about all those bodies out there is that it's not a bad way to go because you're perfectly, well, you're perfectly preserved for eternity. Right. It's like Walt Disney is in a cryo chamber and shit. Just go to Everest. There's all kinds of bodies they could bring back to life, that technology ever comes in.

But the crazy thing is that the ravens fly up to the summit ridge up there. So all the bodies that are up there that don't have their goggles still intact, the ravens peck out their eyeballs. So there's just these frozen bodies down there, like frozen in time with no eyes. It's the creepiest thing. And 99% of those bodies that are up there, they all made the summit. Really? Yeah.

That's why you turned around? Because they got summit fever. They didn't realize that the summit's only halfway. You got to get down. And when you're coming down, if you got nothing left in the tank, if you gave up everything to get to that summit, now you're coming down. Like you can get in trouble real quick at that altitude. Got it. So that's running through your brain too.

And then finally, it's just like the rock comes out of the head. Of course, you know, you got your expedition leader going, you know what, the rate you're moving right now, this is how much oxygen you got in your tank. You have to have a tank of oxygen? Well, because you're on supplemental oxygen.

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