Tim Medvetz

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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

There's only been probably about 200 people in the world that have climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen. Well, I don't understand.

So you're walking around with a tank? Yeah, scuba diving. Wait, like the guy like this who doesn't get in the ass? Yeah, the old guy.

With the guy with emphysema pulling the shit? And the physical therapy place was squeezing the ball thing with the oxygen tank? Yeah. Kind of, except it's in your backpack. Really? How heavy is it? Well, now, I mean, back 50 years ago, it was, you know, those things were like 30, 40 pounds. Now they're weighing in at like 12 pounds, which is still really heavy at that altitude. Really heavy.

So, but yeah, it's, supplement oxygen is definitely a big factor in a lot of people's summits up there, but it's still, it's not really, it's not going to help you run to the summit. Essentially what supplement oxygen does, it keeps you warm. Really? Yeah, it keeps you thinking a little bit clearer. So, why does it keep you warm?

Because what's happening is you only have a third of the oxygen that's at sea level up there. So, like, everything is slow motion. Like, even just tying your shoes, you have to think about it. Like, you essentially have, like, the brain of an 8-year-old, essentially. Because your body's dying. So what happens is when- Your body's dying. Yeah. The human body is not made to survive at that altitude.

If I were to take you right now in a helicopter and drop you off on the summit of Everest, said, hang out here, be back in an hour, you'd be dead by the time I got back. Shut up. Cerebral edema, your brain would swell. Pulmonary edema, your lungs would fill with water. And then you would just die. Why didn't you die?

Because the reason why, it only takes five days to climb Everest from the base camp to the summit, right? You said it takes two years. It takes two months. It takes two months. But the reason why it takes two months is that you're acclimating to that altitude. So what's happening is when you show the base camp, 17,700 feet, then you go up. To 20,000. You bring some loads up.

You drop some tents off, some sleeping bags. Then you come back down. Got it. And the next two days later, you rest. And two days later, you go up to 21,000 feet. Then you come back down. When you go to 23,000 feet and you come back down and you're going back and forth, back and forth. And what's happening is, is your body's producing red blood cells.

And those red blood cells is what you need to stay at that altitude. And so, it's like your Lance Armstrongs, all your Tour de France guys are all blood doping, right? Right. And what they're doing is they're taking a drug that increases their red blood cells. So, did you ever do that? No. Never did that, ever. I wish, actually. Right. Because it would have made it a lot easier. Sure.

I mean, it's not still. It's the same thing. Like, you know, Lance Armstrong got all this crap about, oh, blood doping. They're all blood doping, right? Right. But... It's still, you still got to train. Like what he did was absolutely empower one of the greatest athletes to ever live.

A time like hats off to the guy, just because you're taking testosterone or you're taking growth hormone, you still got to put the work in.

And he had the hottest girl at the time. So Sheryl Crow, how, how cool is she in the day? Yeah. I mean, you're so cool by the way.

Go on. So that's what you're essentially doing on Everest is you're increasing your red blood cells by staying up there, acclimating up and down, up and down. And then finally, when the jet stream slows down enough, That's because normally all year round, the winds are blowing between 100 and 200 miles an hour up at 29,000 feet. It's like you're flying in a commercial jet from L.A.

to New York, right? And so you're not meant to go up that high, especially the winds. The winds will blow you right off the summit. But when the monsoon season hits, the jet stream slows down to almost nil the winds for about a window of about one to two weeks. And you have to be completely acclimated by the time that window comes, which is generally around somewhere around mid-May.

Everybody right now is descending on in Nepal right now because all you ever said. You're stressing the shit out of me.

I'm not even kidding. I'm like sitting here going like I'm the one doing it. Yeah, definitely not Runyon Canyon, right? I couldn't make it up Runyon Canyon.

Yeah. So back to where I was going with this whole story. So now I come back. I turned around. Didn't end up like those frozen bodies up there. Right. Because the other thing that we say in the climbing world is the mountain ain't going nowhere. It's going to be there tomorrow. It's going to be there next year, right? So boom, come back home. Train, train, train. Raise the money again, not cheap.

Raise the money for what? It's about $75,000 to climb Everest. Why? Well, you got a permit that you have to pay. That's about $20,000 just to put your foot on the mountain. You're kidding. Yeah. Then you have to have all your supplemental oxygen. You have to have your tanks. You have to have porters. You have to have the Sherpas. You have to bring all your loads there. There's the food there.

Because it all comes down to one thing, right? If you want anything bad enough in life, you figure out a way to do it, right? Exactly right. You know, so that's what I did. And whatever, I ended up picking up some sponsors the second year. And so I went back the second year, stood on top, did it. Big F you to the doctors. I'll show you. Came back to town, got back to LA.

And then you're just like, okay, you know, you're sitting there with your buddies having a coffee, right? And you're like, so what's next, man? You just climb all that fucking Everest, man. What's next? You know, like ballroom dancing. What do you do now, right? And so I'm like, I don't know. So I just kind of started getting into skydiving again. I was like doing scuba diving.

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