I was thankful to Monty for three important reasons: for the shared friendship and shared regret of missing out on the summit together, and for a ride back to Kathmandu in his Medivac helicopter (instead of a 36 mile trek with a crippled back). I always assumed he’d eventually make his way back to Everest [...]

Sporting SIr Edmund-style goggles, just prior to the summit push   A year ago today I was packing for my summit bid on Mount Everest, full of excitement and significant trepidation. A week later I was able to get past my earlier failure and injury, reaching the top just prior to sunrise on 20 May [...]

I can finally stop holding my breath: Discovery is getting ready to release the EBTL series. Well, it’s still a few months off, but you can register your email, and they’ll probably ship around July 13th: http://store.discovery.com/detail.php?p=257946&v=discovery If you’d like to see me and my buddies slug it up the mountain beforehand, you can even [...]

Like a proud father, here’s a family photo album of the Space Rocks a.k.a. nuggets on-orbit, and as they were repackaged just before launch. The resin in which the lunar samples were embedded turned out to be more flammable than we’d like in a closed environment like the International Space Station. Thanks to a number [...]

High Altitude Hydration System   Often the most difficult part of invention is just identifying the unmet need. Once you figure this out, bringing technology to bear on the problem is generally pretty simple. Having suffered mightily from dehydration on long hikes, treks and climbs in the past, I knew performance and good hydration were [...]

The “Everest BTL” episode in which I was featured, along with buddies Dawes, Danuru, Mingma, Ed, Mike, Louis and Paul, is mega-dramatically entitled: “Deadly Countdown!” If you missed one of the dozen times it played that week, fear not! All is not lost! Assuming you don’t have a heart ailment or fear of heights, here [...]

I recently had a chance to speak with my Challenger Center colleague and friend, Sawyer Rosenstein (who works as a Flight Director at a Challenger Learning Center), along with his fellow panelists Gina Herlihy, Gene Mikulka and Mark Ratterman on a space-focused podcast called “Talking Space” — check it out! These guys are passionate about [...]

I watched the final episodes of EBTL at home with laptop in lap, a first for me. Alan Arnette (@alan_arnette) had virtually assembled a group of Twitterers — both climbers and interested armchair mountaineers — to view and comment on the show in real-time (#EV09). My friend from Everest Base Camp, Keith Cowing (@keithcowing), who [...]

What a thrill it was last night to relive the Everest experience through Discovery’s amazing footage, in the company of many friends and family — made that much nicer without the cold, dehydration, malnutrition and hypoxia of the high Himalayas! I saw the first three episodes at a friend’s house, complete with a deluxe home [...]

Now in its third season, the Discovery Channel’s Everest: Beyond The Limit is taking a new approach to filming this year and will feature both International Mountain Guides and Himalayan Experience in a five-part series. IMG climber Scott Parazynski returned to Everest this season after coming tantalizingly close last year. The former NASA Astronaut was [...]