Episode 11 ~ Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

In episode 11, I talk to mountaineering charity Founder, Sam Sidiqi, who’s embarking on a hugely inspiring world-first mountaineering endeavour in 2023.

After unofficially becoming the first Afghan to summit the highest mountain in the US, Mount Denali (subject to official confirmation) in 2021, Sam will try to become the first Afghan to summit Everest in the spring 2023.

The focus of his climb will be to raise awareness and funds for the Afghan Peaks charity to help in its mission of promoting skiing, climbing, and mountain sports in Afghanistan.

He has degrees in economics and political science from MIT, and now shares his experiences growing up in Afghanistan, and how he wants to help grow mountain sports in this often-misunderstood country.

I: https://www.instagram.com/afghanpeaks/

F: https://www.facebook.com/AfghanPeaks

W: https://www.afghanpeaks.org

• Find the full episode transcript here

  00:00:04 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Hi and welcome to the Tales of Adventure podcast I'm Chris, your host, and every month I'll be interviewing inspiring adventures about overcoming hardship, taking risk, and doing it differently. The podcast aims to document the learning that's got these standout individuals to where they are now.

  00:00:22 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Day's guest is Charity founder Sam Siddiqui, who's embarking on a huge, inspiring world first endeavour in a few months time. After unofficially becoming the first Afghan to summit that hides mountain in the US, Mount Denali in 2021, Samuel tried to become the first Afghan to summit Everest in the spring of this year. The focus of his climb is to raise awareness and funds.

  00:00:41 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  For the Afghan.

  00:00:42 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Weeks charity to help in its mission of promoting skiing, climbing and mountain sports in Afghanistan, we have degrees in economics and political science from MIT and now share his experiences growing up in Afghanistan and how he wants to help grow mountain sports. And this often misunderstood country.

  00:00:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Hey, Sam, welcome to the tales of.

  00:01:01 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Venture podcast hey, it's great to have you.

  00:01:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Here good to.

  00:01:03

  Excellent.

  00:01:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Be here 9:00 AM in the in.

  00:01:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  The US at the moment right, is that right?

  00:01:07 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It is just drop my daughter off at school and got back to.

  00:01:11 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Join the podcast.

  00:01:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Perfect. Perfect. Well, I'm super excited to hear about your Everest expedition, particularly. You're gonna take a non conventional route, which I'm really.

  00:01:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Be really keen to dive into, however, I'd love to hear about how you first got into into your mountaineering journey.

  00:01:27 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. So I'm. I'm from Afghanistan and I'd.

  00:01:29 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Love that the story.

  00:01:31 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Of my mountaineering could be that you know I was born in Kabul at, you know, 2000 metres surrounded by these beautiful peaks and and that's what led to mountaineering.

  00:01:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But you know the reality is I left when I was a year old. I'm also American. So when the Soviets invaded, I I had to leave. So the real story of mountaineering is that my I have an American aunt who lives up in the.

  00:01:52 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Alaska and from the age of like four or five, I used to go spend every other summer up in Alaska. So you know, we just go on little hikes. I remember I had a babysitter once who was up in the mountains and we go.

  00:02:03 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Look at bear poop and.

  00:02:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Moose poop and run around in the woods and you have that beautiful view of Denali and and just a lot of mountains on the horizon.

  00:02:13 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So that kind of connection to Alaska is kind.

  00:02:16 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Of what got?

  00:02:17 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Got the vision for it and then later when I when I moved to Afghanistan for work, the former country manager who I spent a lot of time with and really a really wonderful gentleman named Isha.

  00:02:31 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  He told me these tales of going to Concordia and Pakistan. I'm. I'm not sure if you've heard of Concordia, but it's this place in the Karakorum which is the launching point for lots of great hikes. And it's just, you know, miles and miles. Even to get to Concordia. So he he gave me this beautiful vision of Concordia and he told me how as a.

  00:02:46 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  I really.

  00:02:50 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  A young Pakistani guy, just on his own, he arranged the visa and flew out to Alaska just to walk around Denali. That's how much he he loved the mountains and that was that was really inspiring to me. And I said, look at this guy was able to do that without all the infrastructure.

  00:02:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Wow. Wow.

  00:03:07 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  What? Why can't I do this if I also have the love for it, right? Yeah. So.

  00:03:13 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  That's when I started thinking about it, and then later when I moved to Kuwait, I had an American friend who just loved climbing and he invited me out to the Alps and with he and his family and some friends, we went and did Mont Blanc and so Mont Blanc ended up being my real first mountain.

  00:03:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And then from there I just would go to the Alps and just.

  00:03:37 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Kept on picking up climbing.

  00:03:40 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah. Wow it it's it's such an interesting story because I can imagine growing up and seeing Denali, this huge, it's a monster of amount. I've I've not been up close to see it, but it's obviously on the the Seven Summits challenge. So I'm kind of well aware of of people who've climbed it and.

  00:03:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  I've also heard many stories saying that it's actually hard than Everest that Everest is a is a bit of a a, quote unquote walking a park by comparison. How how did you find?

  00:04:11 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You know, climbing you you climbed denali him. That's how. How did.

  00:04:13 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah, I climbed Denali in 2021. So I've heard similar things. So it really depends on the style in which you climb now. Denali dictates that you climb in a certain style, that there, there are not poor high altitude porters available on Denali. They're guides. And maybe they'll carry a little bit more than you. But if you're doing Denali, you pretty much have to carry your own weight.

  00:04:14 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You find it.

  00:04:35 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And what that means is you start off with about 130 lbs of gear when you land, so that 60 or 70 in your pack and 60 or 70 in a sled.

  00:04:41

  Yeah, well.

  00:04:44 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  That.

  00:04:44 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You're pulling and and that takes a very specific type of training.

  00:04:49 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And it's different from Everest, where depending on again your style, I mean you you can go heavy on Everest, but more likely you're going to be hiring high altitude porters and then you're not carrying that super heavyweight. Certainly Denali doesn't have the Super high altitude that Everest does. So you don't need oxygen.

  00:05:09 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Denali and and the acclimatisation isn't as intense, but it's still a lot of.

  00:05:16 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I mean, because Denali's prominence is quite high in terms of where you start climbing, you start climbing at around 2000 metres going up to 6000 metres, so that's a good 4000 metres of of vertically you claim. So that's slightly more than ever where you're starting a little above 5.

  00:05:30

  Yeah, yeah.

  00:05:35 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Or maybe it's still a little bit less than average, but but it's equivalent prominence you could say in terms of the amount you're climbing, and just just a lot more weight.

  00:05:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah. And I and I guess you've got this this extra challenge of of pulling this, all this pulling and carrying this weight just to the start line. So it's almost like the equivalent of kind of running a race before you get to some kind of a marathon in some ways and that from from what I understand what I hear about it.

  00:05:57 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah.

  00:05:59 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. So with with Denali, what happens is that you fly in on a snow plane. So it's a plane that has wheels and skis, which has its own special thing.

  00:06:08 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Cool.

  00:06:09 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So you you land on a glacier, but the rules of the National Park are that you're not allowed to land a commercial plane in the park.

  00:06:17 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So it lands a little away from where you actually start your climb. So the first day of of Denali is a pretty long hike, and it's not. You're not gaining much vertical. You don't. You're not getting much vertical with 130 lbs.

  00:06:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Some some people do do single pushes, but once you establish that first camp at 7000 and you really start climbing, then you start doing.

  00:06:45 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You'll split your pack in half so you'll climb up, bury your pack halfway, and then climb back down. Sleep in your tent the next day, carry your tent past your stash.

  00:06:56 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Go to the next camp, set up your next camp. The day after, you'll go back down. Dig out what you put in the in the snow and bring it back up to camp. So it's a it's a bit of drudgery doing that, but it is good from an acclimatisation perspective. You're you're forced to acclimatise because you're going up and down a.

  00:07:14 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Bunch of times.

  00:07:16 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, it it almost. It reminds me somewhat of kind of leadership and management training. You know where you've got the what is it the, the, the the metaphor is like a a fox, a chicken and an egg or something like that. You've got to move the the chicken and the egg across the river without the fox eating the two. And it's obviously it's it's the same similar because you're obviously you're carrying a.

  00:07:35 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  A huge amount of weight vertically, you know to A to a base camp and then obviously to A to another higher camp and obviously making sure that you can sustain yourself the next night and get the benefits of acclimatisation.

  00:07:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  And so it's it adds a level of complexity that I think you know kind of Mount Alpine mountaineering. Certainly you know doesn't have that kind of that same challenge.

  00:07:55 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  About it, doesn't it?

  00:07:55 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. And I mean, one of the key things and it's a lot easier now with GPS. But where is your stuff, right, so.

  00:08:02 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So there were these incredibly smart crows up there, and if you don't bury your stuff deep enough, the crows will get in there. So you gotta really dig a good 4456 feet into the snow and then you mark it with with wands. But if there's big snow, the wands can.

  00:08:10

  Ohh wow.

  00:08:19 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Cover. So. So there's a lot of in the old days, there's a lot of calculation and you and somebody would say, oh, pick up my stuff and they kind of tell.

  00:08:27 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You where it is and looking for.

  00:08:29 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It I think now with GPS tagging, if you're well organised, it's not as big a deal, but you know, just knowing knowing where you breed your staff was an adventure itself.

  00:08:40 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  That's I've, you know, I've, I've I've all of the things I've read about Denali and mountaineering in general. I've never heard of this problem before in that you've got, you know, got this real problem trying to find your stuff without without the crows, obviously, like ripping it apart and taking it away. And obviously things like, you know, things like GPS communicator or something, you know.

  00:09:00 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  To to find that the approximate location obviously no.

  00:09:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Coordinates can be like hundreds, hundreds of metres out by 1 digit simplex, can't they? So if you get the wrong you're you're you're literally digging the size of a, you know, a football or soccer field trying to find somebody's gear or or your own gear. So yeah, that's that's a A never complexity. I never even thought of that. And I know we've kind of touched on it.

  00:09:23 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Already, but I kind of love to hear more about the the reasons why you're going to climb Everest. There's a very special reason which I'd love to love to hear about.

  00:09:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah, my main reason for climbing Everest.

  00:09:32 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Is I would.

  00:09:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Like to use the news coverage of the first Afghan ascent of Everest to bring attention to Afghan peaks.

  00:09:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's a nonprofit that's working to develop mountain sport in Afghanistan. I plan to pay for my own trip, so it's it's not about raising money for my trip. Every dollar that we raise will go directly to the activities that are going to grow mountaineering and skiing in Afghanistan. So, for example, we had a ski race the last couple of years. I use the DENALI funds.

  00:09:59 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To help pay for that this year, we got a donation from Afghan Sports Trust and they challenged me to, hey, let's just not just have the ski race, let's do some more. And what we came up with was to hire a bunch of carpenters in different villages to build wood and ski.

  00:10:14 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  These.

  00:10:15 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And and then we'll be distributing those wooden skis to get more participants because.

  00:10:16

  Or.

  00:10:20 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  What? What I'm.

  00:10:21 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Thinking about for Afghan Afghan peaks, it's not just about climbing. I think climbing is great and and I want climbing and skiing to happen. But Afghanistan is a poor, landlocked country and it's got two neighbours in China and India that have a population of more than a billion people.

  00:10:36 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Each so Afghanistan is never going to be competing in terms of scale production, right? It's it has agriculture, it will have mining. What else does it?

  00:10:46 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Have well it.

  00:10:47 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Has these beautiful mountains.

  00:10:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yes. Yeah.

  00:10:49 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So I want to invest now.

  00:10:51 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Full.

  00:10:52 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  In the precursors to mountain tourism, so that when the tourist economy comes, we'll be having Afghans directly benefiting from that tourism. I mean, independently of that, it's great to see people enjoying their mountains, right? So if you're poor or rich, you can enjoy skiing a powder day. And I think that's adding.

  00:11:09 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Value to the country.

  00:11:11 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So that's the main reason I do love climbing. I'm excited to see the Himalaya. There are a tonne of mountains I would love.

  00:11:18 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To climb, but.

  00:11:19 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I think the news coverage that climbing the highest mountain in the world gives is something that can really benefit growing Afghan mountain sport, and that's my main driver.

  00:11:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yes. Yeah. And and I think probably just to add on to that, I've I've been to bamyan the area you're talking about where you had the ski race before and it's it is incredible that the Hindu Kush has a special place in my heart having snowboarded there with, you know, with, with mounting guides and kind of, you know.

  00:11:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Had this level of hospitality that you don't. I've never had anywhere else before. You know it was. It was utterly incredible. And obviously the the scenery as well, you know, incredible lakes. There's incredible.

  00:11:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Rivers, there's incredible. Just, you know, kind of culture and and this real vibe about it that is is intoxicating. And so yes, I'm, I'm I'm super keen to kind of follow this journey that Afghan piques is on and that's been kindly supported by the Afghan Sports Trust as well because I think it's.

  00:12:18 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It's such a a a good thing to bring, you know, kind of attention to that area that's, you know, people look past it already, don't they?

  00:12:25 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah, it's it's a really wonderful ski race, but it's a bit of a shocker. So I I was living in Kuwait the first time I participated in 2018.

  00:12:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And coming from sea level, the real skiing starts at 3000 metres. So. So you land in in Bamiyan. You're staying in a hotel at 2500 metre, kind of struggling up the stairs.

  00:12:44 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To acclimatise.

  00:12:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:12:46

  And then you drive.

  00:12:47 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Up for another half an hour and there at 3000 metres then.

  00:12:50 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You start walking up the mountain.

  00:12:53 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So when I when I did the ski race, I started off very, very much at the back as I'm walking up and these little Afghan shepherds.

  00:13:01 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  These boys who?

  00:13:02 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Were running up and down the mountain. Some of them had, like, walked four hours that day to get to.

  00:13:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  The race they're just running up the mountain ahead of me.

  00:13:09

  But it's it's a lot of fun.

  00:13:10 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's a lot of fun to to do.

  00:13:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, I'd, I'd, yeah, looking forward to to hearing.

  00:13:17 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  More about it and then.

  00:13:17 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I mean, there's still space that, you know, you may have heard of untamed borders, but they've always brought participants from outside to participate and and they still have a package open today. So if you want to go ski the Bahamian ski race this year, there's still some space to join untamed borders and will take you out. And you can participate.

  00:13:31

  Yeah.

  00:13:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Fantastic. Well, great. I've. I've got onto their website. I'll. I'll make sure this this level of information is in the show notes as well because it's quite.

  00:13:43 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It's it's critical to kind of bring bring this kind of level of attention to it. Fantastic stuff. Well, so I guess it does lead me on to my my next question is how are you preparing for Everest, you you you mentioned about going from sea level to kind of 3000 metres and you know the very few days. How are you using that background knowledge to pay for?

  00:14:02 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Everest in the in the in the coming months.

  00:14:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. So there's there's a few parts we we can talk about, the technical, the fitness and the altitude.

  00:14:13 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Let's cover the technical side first. So because I've been doing a lot of mountaineering, I'm not super focused on the technical side. So the work I've done in the Alps kind of walking across glaciers and crampons, walking in mixed terrain, getting used to being on a rope team, just doing a lot of clowns.

  00:14:32 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Beforehand I think made me ready.

  00:14:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  For.

  00:14:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  That the piece that I didn't have until I did Denali, which which was kind of a separate piece, is the winter camping. So how do you take care of yourself?

  00:14:44 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Cold. It's a little bit less of a challenge on Everest because you have so much support and there's there is extra gear that people are carrying, but there's still a lot of elements of self-care that are super important because if it's -20, you're -40, you can't just be brave and say, oh, I'm going to take off my glove and handle this. That's being silly.

  00:15:04

  Yeah.

  00:15:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And and it's not about just kind of over exerting yourself, if you've exerted yourself, then you need to take care of yourself and rest because it's it's not a single day push, you know it's a, it's a couple of weeks and keeping yourself healthy.

  00:15:19 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  The and and taking care of yourself in the cold, our skill sets that you need to build it doesn't doesn't come naturally to city livers. You know, there was. There were people who I saw they couldn't summit Denali because they were, let's say, not comfortable with how you relieve yourself in a tent, right?

  00:15:39 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  There's a process, yeah. And if you're not used to that, or if it stresses you out and it's your first time doing it, that's not great. So getting used to, how do you deal with yourself in a tent in a cold situation that that's kind of one that sometimes people don't don't expect. But I feel like I have that in the bag. So I'm not super worried on the technical side.

  00:16:00 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  On the fitness side, again, I think Denali was was a pretty high bar. And so my climbing guide, I said look, if you've done Denali, I'm not worried about your fitness, just do that same thing and it's worthwhile kind of thinking about how how that fitness journey works. So when I climbed.

  00:16:19 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Mont Blanc, for the first time I was doing some training I was running, but as I got to the top those last few hours I was really ******* like I. I struggled a lot.

  00:16:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, same. Yeah, same experience.

  00:16:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  That's what I was kind of young enough to just kind of gut it out.

  00:16:35 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And I and I made it right down, had a great experience.

  00:16:38 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But it was it was rough, so I started looking into it more. And there's a book I've used called the uphill athlete.

  00:16:46 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And and then you can subscribe to this website training peaks and they have the uphill athlete workout built in. So it's a Shorty. They give you a specific 24 week training plan. So for six months you just get an e-mail every day and you do what the e-mail says.

  00:16:47

  M.

  00:16:58 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But the the guidelines for it, the biggest issue is about building your aerobic base, which is Zone 2, and I used to think, oh, I'm I'm running, I'm training. But if you're not running the right way, you're not actually helping yourself, because quite often we always want to push ourselves and you push yourself and you might be in what's called.

  00:16:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Great.

  00:17:19 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Zone 3 or Zone 4, and that's not going to give you the training benefits you're looking for because we have two different energy pathways in our system, right? We have the anaerobic and we have the aerobic.

  00:17:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And aerobic sorry the anaerobic.

  00:17:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Is just super explosive. It gives you energy. You can tap into it so quickly that we just naturally use our anaerobic and then we like that feel of we've pushed ourselves so hard we felt we've accomplished something. And and there are reasons why you do want to train your energy system, but sometimes it's at the expense of your aerobic, so from engineering.

  00:17:55 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's almost exclusively in aerobic folks, the aerobic focus, and So what you're doing is you find that zone 2 heart rate. For me, it's kind of this one 44145.

  00:18:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And almost all my training has to be at that rate. And just to give you a feel for what that means, it's while you're jogging or walking, you can have a comfortable conversation and at the end of the workout, you actually don't feel that tired. So I can go out for a 2 hour jog and finish and then go to activities. I'm not supposed to be feeling tired and. And So what happens to your body over this?

  00:18:25 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Period is you shift from kind of burning ready energy to burning fat and burning fat. It's a slower process so it doesn't give you the energy immediately, but it can just go on and on because you're not producing lactose at the same time.

  00:18:41 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And and So what you what your body does is that the muscular level you're building up mitochondria in those muscles, kind of making them slow twitch muscles and building up the enzymes. They can process the fat.

  00:18:41

  OK.

  00:18:53 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So then you can really just go on for longer and longer. So a typical Sunday for me, which is a longer day, it might be 3 hours of walking jogging. So as soon as I hit a hill, if the hills at all steep, I'm going to start walking.

  00:19:08 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To keep my heart rate at the level supposed to.

  00:19:11 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And it it sucks when you go out with your running buddies.

  00:19:15 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And I think I have to give up running with them because people are just used to their a certain pace and you realise you know, it's not going to help me on Everest. So I'm actually going to just start, I'm going to.

  00:19:25 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Walk.

  00:19:25 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Up this hill and my buddy can go on and.

  00:19:28 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I'll cut. Cut the.

  00:19:28 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Course and meet them later, but you know, I'll go to a three hour day.

  00:19:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Now I'm working into doing that three hour day might have some weight attached to it, so starting off with maybe 20 lbs up to 30 and 40 lbs later so that you're just really doing specific things that build up this cardio basis. The other another side of it is the strength.

  00:19:49 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Meaning.

  00:19:50 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And and the strength training from engineering is again a little bit counterintuitive. So when we think about muscle training a lot of times we're just say, hey, I'm going to rip apart my muscles and grow then that's what muscle training is. And if your body building or you want to get big, that's what you do. But in mountaineering, you don't actually want to carry all that extra weight up the mountain. So what they focus you on is.

  00:20:11 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Max strength training. So here what you're trying to do is just increase the muscles you use. So typically what we're doing when we're lifting is we're only using maybe 10% of our.

  00:20:23 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Because of the kind of the the mind muscle connection. But if you focus on your Max strength in your training sets, you can actually recruit up to 1820% of your muscles. So for the same muscle mass, you can be stronger the stronger you are, the more movement you can make in the mountain without stressing yourself out. So it's again about keeping everything aerobic.

  00:20:34

  Yeah.

  00:20:43 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So that I can. So I'm doing step ups with £150 now. So that means I can do a step up with 120 extra pounds and not be freaking myself out and staying in that aerobic zone for longer.

  00:20:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:20:56 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And then the last thing is out.

  00:20:57 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Attitude. So I have a young daughter and I have a wife that doesn't want me away for a long time. So kind of the the six to eight weeks that it would normally take to do Everest doesn't doesn't work for me and I do have challenges with altitude. I I wasn't able to Summit Kilimanjaro because I I tried to go too quickly. Part of my struggle. Mont Blanc I think was.

  00:21:04 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:21:09

  Yeah.

  00:21:18 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Climatization I got lucky on Denali. We had two well placed storms that gave me extra days at 11 camp and 15 camp.

  00:21:25 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So. So that helped my acclimatisation. So for Everest I'm going with Fernbach event adventures and they're one of two companies that do what's called a flash clip.

  00:21:36 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And what that means is you go up faster and the way they allow you to do that is they send you a tent beforehand. So it's an acclimatisation tent that reduces your level of oxygen.

  00:21:47 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And so over 6 to 8 weeks you.

  00:21:48 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah.

  00:21:52 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You know each week you're reducing the amount of oxygen you sleep with, and it might reduce your training. You might not sleep as well, but it says that's fine. The bigger thing is to just get a climate up, and so you can show up to ever space camp pre acclimatised to 7000 metres.

  00:22:08 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So that's.

  00:22:08

  Yeah.

  00:22:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, because you you've grown those extra red blood cells that actually carry the oxygen kind of around your system.

  00:22:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Doesn't it? Yeah.

  00:22:13 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah, I think I.

  00:22:14 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Think there's red blood?

  00:22:15 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Cells. There's other stuff.

  00:22:16 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  That goes on. It's not just a single heart like so our our systems are quite complicated. So when I was young, I was diagnosed with thalassemia minor.

  00:22:20

  Yeah.

  00:22:28 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Now it's not a big deal here in the US, so I haven't had doctors be able to tell me much more than that, but it is kind of a kind of a blood issue where my haemoglobin is might might be slightly misshapen, and so I I excrete them faster. So. So I I wonder if I'm going to struggle to build up my red blood cells.

  00:22:34 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:22:46 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But what I understand is it's not just the red blood cells, there's a whole bunch of different things going on in your body that lead.

  00:22:51 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To this acclimatisation.

  00:22:54 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yes. Yeah.

  00:22:54 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But it's it's beyond me to go into the full.

  00:22:56 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Science of it.

  00:22:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, I've got a huge a huge interest in the in the background behind this stuff. So when you started talking about zone, you know?

  00:23:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  And three, the kind of the lactate threshold, the glycogen. Obviously in your, in your fast twitch muscles, that sort of stuff. It's a a huge.

  00:23:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Interest of mine for the I I did the when I was training for the mouth and the Saabs and the the Mont Blanc and kind of other endurance events as well. You know I took, I took a real drill down to the detail in the same level that you have by sounds but you know to understand what's what's going on in my body at the time. How can I make this better? How can I optimise myself for?

  00:23:33 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You know, for this challenge I'm trying to put me through and I'm I'm right now focusing on doing the Silk Road Mountain. Raza, a 1700 kilometre mountain bike race. It's probably sometime next year using the same principles as well. So yeah, here, here and get you know, come from another person. Actually, it's kind of it's it's hugely reassuring cause.

  00:23:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It makes me know that I'm not, you know, I haven't got the wrong understanding of that. Super interesting to hear about your how you're preparing for Everest. It leads me on to my next question is how will you be climbing it? And that is kind of your your plan for getting to the summit cause?

  00:24:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  I know it's slightly unconventional also.

  00:24:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. So my plan again, we're working with Fernbach adventures in in flash style is to climb from the north side. So that is from Tibet, which is controlled by China.

  00:24:18 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And.

  00:24:19 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's been interesting because China has been closed for.

  00:24:23 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  A while because of.

  00:24:24 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  COVID and so for I think for the last two years there haven't really been a sense from the.

  00:24:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  North.

  00:24:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Side the under the belief is that they will be opening up the north side this year and our belief is strengthened by the fact that in general they've opened up to COVID.

  00:24:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Obviously, unfortunately, a lot of death that they're experiencing right now from that. But if they're, if they are open, then it's likely that they'll be opening to ever space camp from the north side as well. And it's a little bit interesting because.

  00:24:46 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:24:56 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You know, historically the north side was actually produced more deaths in in the previous years and that was counterintuitive to me because I'm coming from the north side because I don't want to die and why? Why was it producing more deaths and what I can gather and this is in fact, but but what I could.

  00:25:02 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Oh wow.

  00:25:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yes. Yeah.

  00:25:16 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Gather is that.

  00:25:17 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  The north side used to be a lot less expensive and so.

  00:25:23 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  People who didn't necessarily have the money to hire guides but really wanted to climb Everest. They just go from the north side because it was a bit cheaper and so some of them might not have been preparing correctly or they didn't necessarily have the skill set to plan their whole trip themselves. And then they would leave themselves exposed and in a bad situation. So. So that was part of it. And it was a little bit like.

  00:25:43

  Yeah, yeah.

  00:25:45 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Instead of the Wild West was the wild N the other piece of it is that you can basically drive up to 5000 metres.

  00:25:48

  Yeah.

  00:25:53 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Right. So and today it's a highway, but even in those days you could drive on on a road up to they call it drivers camp at 5:00.

  00:26:00 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  1000 metres. Yeah, really.

  00:26:02 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So you know, remember how hard it was for us to climb Mount Blanc at 4800 and how we were dealing with altitude defections, driving right up and and you can imagine that if somebody hasn't acclimatised.

  00:26:08 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah.

  00:26:13 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Directly, they're suddenly stressing themselves out just to be at base camp, and they're like, well, I'm here. I don't have the money. Let's start climbing and they just get themselves into the red and they get into danger situations. Whereas on the South side, it's more typical, especially if you don't have money. Is it your you got to walk in and and that walk in helps you to acclimatise in in the same way on Denali.

  00:26:25

  Yeah.

  00:26:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah.

  00:26:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  All that extra walking is helping to climb.

  00:26:35 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  With us so.

  00:26:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Is. Yeah, I think off the top sort of somewhere. I think I think it's 1% less oxygen in the air for every 100 metres above 1800 metres, I think so.

  00:26:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  I think what about a third less air? If you drive up to 5000 metres roughly, which obviously you can see now is is they're almost flashing, not flashing. It's the wrong turn, but they're they're they're they're driving up to 5000 metres and going for a lightning attempt on the summit. It's it's like 8848 and, you know, obviously just going from.

  00:27:10 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Zero, you know, 100 an oxygen to 70% oxygen to then obviously was it 20% oxygen. It's the death zone of Everest from off the top of my head. But yeah, it it makes sense. What kind of everything you're saying?

  00:27:20 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah, so so that's why historically there were these extra deaths on the north side. And again, it's counterintuitive. The reason I didn't want to climb on the South side is that you have to climb to the jumbo icefall, potentially multiple times as you're doing your climatization runs.

  00:27:32 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:27:35 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And to me, the Cowboys follows an objective danger. There are these are acts that at anytime it's called an ice fall, the ice can just fall on you and and and it's happened. Yeah. So I would prefer not not to be putting myself at that risk and I prefer not to be putting Nepalese porters at that risk for my sake. So that's why I like the idea of the Northern route but I then I was like well.

  00:27:51

  Yeah.

  00:27:55 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Why all these deaths and and why are the deaths decreasing on the north side while the Chinese decided they didn't like that and so they started cracking down on who could be a tour operator on the north side. So they greatly reduced the tour operators and they have requirements that tour operators are, you know, much more careful. I read one book by I think Mark sign.

  00:28:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:28:14 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Where you know he he was trying to climb and there were these really people who weren't ready to be on that mountain. I think they were trying to take a group of young kids up and they were stalling out on the line and. And suddenly, if you're at 7000 metres and somebody ahead of you isn't prepared to use an ascender and they don't really know to use their crampons and they're freaking out.

  00:28:36 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's very bad for them, but it's also bad for you because if you're just standing still, you could be getting cold. You could be running out of oxygen. And so now that there's a lot fewer operators, I would expect there to be much fewer crowds. And that is very important for my safety and and my summit attempt.

  00:28:54 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah, I think we we've seen in the previous few years of, I mean prior to COVID have shown the the kind of cues that were on Everest from the, from the the South side, doesn't there, we've got the photo from Nims who you know who shot him a big huge I think over the the Hillary step you know that led all the way to the summit you know and.

  00:29:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It it made it made like the the National Newspapers Front page here in the UK and I think around the world as well. So yeah, that that kind of that that queuing and that exposure and that hypothermia effect now I think is acutely known by.

  00:29:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Not just the mountaineering community, but by, you know, by the world at large, yeah.

  00:29:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So then so that's.

  00:29:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  A little bit about the South side. So just to give you an idea of the itinerary we're supposed to arrive in Kathmandu and get our Tibet visa there and then fly to Las. That takes a two or three days and then we'll drive to she got sick.

  00:29:47 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So she got, say, is at 3800 metres and spend the night and then drive to the drivers camp or base camp at 5200 metres.

  00:29:57 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. So I just looked up on Google. It says that that 17 hours of driving now, what does that actually mean? You know, 15 to 20 hours, you could say. Yeah. And but just to put it in perspective, we already we already mentioned Mont Blanc is 4800 metres, you know, for your listeners who are in the US, the highest point in the 4848 states.

  00:30:16 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Is Mount Whitney at 4400 metres so our drivers are just hanging out at the top of some of the highest mountains in the US and Europe. And so now we've, let's say taken 5 days to get to base.

  00:30:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Camp we'll take another two days to hike up to Advanced Base camp, which is at 6400 metres. So now we're getting ready to start climbing and we're already higher than Denali. So so from there because we're pre acclimatised, we don't have as many.

  00:30:43 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah. Wow. Incredible.

  00:30:50 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Climatization runs as would be typical for for the longer routes, but there is still an acclimatisation, so we'll take one rotation to the north coal and the north coal is at 7000 metres, and after that we'll go back to base.

  00:31:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Camp to recover.

  00:31:06 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And then we just wait for the weather window and I think we should have time in the schedule for one or two attempts, hopefully just one attempt. And and 1st you'll kind of retrace your steps to ABC and then to the North Pole and above the North Pole is camp one, which and it's a pretty steep.

  00:31:27 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Glacier climb to get up to north coal so it's it's nice to be able to camp after that and then you move on to Camp 2, which is going to be.

  00:31:31

  Yeah.

  00:31:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  At 7000.

  00:31:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  800 metres. That's after kind of following the North Ridge up to the northeast Ridge.

  00:31:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And then after camp two, you get to camp three at 8300 metres.

  00:31:45 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And after that is where you get to the crux of the climb. So there are they call them steps, which are kind of pretty vertical things you've got to climb up. So there's a first, a second and a third step. The second step is basically the crux of the climb.

  00:32:01 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But again, we're not talking about full on wall climbing here. We there will be ropes set up and we'll have something that's called an ascender, the common language there is called a jumar. And so you have a a rope that you manage yourself with and you're probably tied to your rope team as well. So you have a couple of security points.

  00:32:20 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And they've also installed.

  00:32:22 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Ladder now it seems easy to talk about climbing a ladder we've all climbed.

  00:32:26 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Ladders it does.

  00:32:27 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Get a little bit more complex when you have all these.

  00:32:29 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Ropes around you, you're.

  00:32:31 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Up.

  00:32:32 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Over 8400 metres and you've got on these big clunky mountain boots and crampons, which are basically spikes sticking out of your feet. You're trying to navigate.

  00:32:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Lungs of a ladder. So I.

  00:32:42 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's still, it's, it's still.

  00:32:44 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Going to be.

  00:32:44 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Hard, but you're not kind of trying to.

  00:32:48 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You know, grabbing ice cracks and use ice, ice, ice access to climb up the vertical surface, it's it is still manageable.

  00:32:57 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And so then after the second step you.

  00:32:59 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Get to the.

  00:32:59 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Third step and then there's just kind of walking up the the summit face and hopefully getting to the top. So we're actually only in this in the in the itinerary, budgeting 12 days for the ascent.

  00:33:12 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Right. Because there is, there's days on either side, which is very different from, you know, the the six to eight weeks that you might normally put. So this is a three-week itinerary. Once you add in the a little bit of the travel time with Kathmandu.

  00:33:12

  Yeah. Wow. Wow.

  00:33:22

  Yeah.

  00:33:27

  Yes.

  00:33:27 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So that's that's, that's the plan.

  00:33:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Wow, it's it's it. It sounds really interesting to hear about it from this side because obviously the the Nepal side is is hugely covered in obviously films in documentaries and yeah, and all sorts. And I think the come to Israel now is probably, you know, probably known by most people when they just hear about Everest. But I think the, the, the Tibet side is is super interesting because it's got these.

  00:33:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  All.

  00:33:52 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Other challenges attributed you know to to, to going that route, you know from the Lightning ascent in driving up to. I had no idea about, you know, drivers camp for example. You know it's it's.

  00:34:02 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, I've heard of some some pretty high passes before, but I've never heard of, you know, drivers camp, that's that's 5200 metres. That's incredible. So yeah, the the.

  00:34:10 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  One one thing I'm excited about is I've heard that there are some climbers who are trying to develop another route on the South side that goes around the jumbo ice fall. I'm I'm sure there have been kind of very technical ones, but I think they're trying to establish a route that wouldn't involve the ice fall, but that would work for commercial expeditions. So I.

  00:34:11

  The.

  00:34:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I think that that's.

  00:34:30

  Yeah.

  00:34:31 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Worth some investment to kind of finding things that aren't going to put.

  00:34:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Climbers. Climbers is one thing, but you know the.

  00:34:37 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  These are workers who?

  00:34:38 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Are kind of taking a lot more risk to set up the camp for the climbers.

  00:34:42 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To take a.

  00:34:42 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Much smaller risk, so something would be better for the workers. I I think is is really worth worth spending some time on.

  00:34:44 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:34:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, definitely. You mentioned the tracks, which are basically just giant ice towers in which, you know, like.

  00:34:55 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It it it's terrifying just thinking about being on the sirac, because if you when you didn't realise you're actually on one, it's, you know, you can get this real sense of fear all of a sudden. It just comes from nowhere because you realise the precariousness of it. But one thing I definitely wanted to draw out actually was your your other monsoon achievements. So we've spoken about Mont Blanc, but you've also tackled Matterhorn.

  00:35:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  And and some of today as well, so can you?

  00:35:16 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Tell us a bit.

  00:35:17 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  More about that so you know when you're in, when you're in the Alps and you look around at the mountains, the Matterhorn. It's just such a beautiful mountain. And I remember seeing him thinking, that's crazy to think.

  00:35:17

  Yeah.

  00:35:24

  Yeah.

  00:35:28 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  That but, but there's just this kind of step by step process as you get into climbing where you can get more comfortable with exposure and and you can realise that you can do certain things without really taking big risks if you're if you're taking the steps and and you have the assistance because you know you can watch those free solo climbers.

  00:35:43

  Yeah.

  00:35:49 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I I never intend to do that.

  00:35:51 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But when you.

  00:35:52 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  When you look at how they.

  00:35:53 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Approach it, I don't think.

  00:35:56 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Some of those guys are taking massive risks. Some of those guys, they're they're very well planned and what they're doing and they've dedicated the time and the effort that they understand the outcomes when they take certain actions. So I don't ever intend to move in that far, but it is, it is possible to climb Matterhorn reasonably safely.

  00:36:15 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  The bigger issue with Matterhorn these days is it it's a very popular climb, so climbers above you can kick rocks and then and then hit you, right? So my my recommendation on Matterhorn is to hire a local Swiss guide.

  00:36:32 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Because when you stay on the Swiss side and you're in the Swiss Hut, the Swiss go first.

  00:36:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So it's just understood. So if you if you train to go fast, then you're going to be in the top, let's say four or five climbers and there's fewer rocks coming down.

  00:36:52 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  On your head.

  00:36:54 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense.

  00:36:55

  So.

  00:36:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  But.

  00:36:57 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  I think also also as well. So to just to to clarify, so you you're the we think you're the possibly the first Afghan to have some.

  00:37:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Pointed the matter.

  00:37:05 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So, so, on Matterhorn. I was hoping to say that, but conveniently or inconveniently for me, the day before the ascent, there was this Iranian guy, and so his English wasn't great. My diary was worse. We did a little English, a little diary, a little German.

  00:37:22 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But he made.

  00:37:23 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It clear to me that he has an Afghan friend who.

  00:37:25 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Who climbed matter before so?

  00:37:29 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  No.

  00:37:29

  It's great. I think it's.

  00:37:30

  A I think it's a.

  00:37:31 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Great story. It's part of the journey where I was like, oh, maybe I'll be the because I'm. I'm pretty sure there's Afghan to climb up long before me, so it wasn't wasn't assuming that, but matterhorns a tough times like.

  00:37:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Maybe I'm the first half.

  00:37:40 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  He's like Nope, my friend. And so I I became friends with him on on Facebook. And I I think he's a very strong.

  00:37:42

  Yeah.

  00:37:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  OK.

  00:37:49 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Timer so I I'd love to do some things with him in the future and I although I might be the first step Everest for a mix of financial and climbing reasons, I I have a lot of respect for him as as an Afghan climber and there's a lot of Afghan climbers out there who are really, really strong.

  00:37:51

  Yeah.

  00:38:04 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah.

  00:38:04 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But but I do believe that I was the first Afghan to summit Denali. I had the forest Rangers kind of check.

  00:38:11 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  The log books.

  00:38:13 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And it's kind of far enough away from main Afghan centres of living that that I do. I'm pretty sure I'm the first Afghan to ascended.

  00:38:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:38:21 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  That's incredible. It's probably some mixing material of of of then.

  00:38:26 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah. Can we call our previous conversations around it? That's. Yeah, that's one. It's just one big slab of a.

  00:38:29 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  No, it's I think.

  00:38:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  A great story like you know.

  00:38:32 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Because the mountain the mountain community is actually pretty small. So.

  00:38:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I just happened.

  00:38:35 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To be climbing at the same time as this Iranian guy who who knew the other Afghan who done it like, OK, that's that's awesome.

  00:38:35

  Yeah.

  00:38:42 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. So the other climber, his name is Eswaran Abidan, and he puts up some pretty cool clients on social media. So. So definitely worth checking out his stuff. And I definitely want to get him more involved in developing Afghan mountaineering and climbing out as as we go.

  00:38:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, definitely us. If if he doesn't mind, maybe putting a an Instagram or Facebook link to to his pages or something in the in the show notes. So we can highlight, you know, highlight kind of you know more climbers like yourself and him to to international community. Then I think it's you know it it's it kind of we we need to have these kind of inspirational people and leaders and.

  00:39:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  That more in our awareness than kind of what you know what big magazines and and newspapers and and media kind of pushes out some days.

  00:39:22 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah.

  00:39:24 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah. So I guess it leads me on to my next question is kind of what, what advice do you have for other people who want to climb Everest?

  00:39:31 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  In general, whether that's Tibet or the Nepal side?

  00:39:33 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah, I think just understanding it's a big objective with a lot of different pieces. So. So we talked through the technical aspect and the fitness aspect. So I think you do what I did, which is you start small and then work your way up. So you build your skills and confidence just being out in the mountains.

  00:39:53 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Over the years, being on the rope teams, being crampons, being crampons on rock and ice and and then as you're doing that, just keep on focusing on building your Zone 2.

  00:40:07 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Your your base, aerobic and and your mountain chases that will just kind of keep getting stronger and build year to year. So I kind of started that a bit late. I wish I'd started that earlier but if you if you start that early you're just going to be a lot stronger in the mountains. I think another piece of advice that has made me feel more comfortable.

  00:40:28 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Is to practise fail.

  00:40:30 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So you know, you spend a lot of money and you spend a lot of time preparing to do a climb. So it's very easy to get stuck in a goal set. So you're so focused on the goal that you're going.

  00:40:41 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  To.

  00:40:41 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Take risks. So I I was kind of nervous about that for myself because I I can get pretty goal focused. So one of my first failures was I was trying to climb Mount Hood.

  00:40:42

  Yeah.

  00:40:51 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  In Oregon. Mm-hmm. And the weather just got really bad. And when the guide said, hey, this weather isn't what I'm liking for summiting. Let let's turn around.

  00:41:02 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I said Yep, let's turn around and and that for me was a very important check mark to make and the same thing on Kilimanjaro on Kilimanjaro. We had kind of limited time and we went like after COVID was there. But before the lockdown happened. So we had some nervousness about that. And so we're trying to go fast up the mountain and.

  00:41:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah.

  00:41:22 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  I got really nauseous and my oxygen levels weren't that high, and S PO2 and said hey, it's not worth it.

  00:41:31 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's wrong.

  00:41:32 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Let's let's live another day. Let's not take big risks because.

  00:41:36 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Because.

  00:41:37 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  There were a lot of guides when I talked to about reading the different mountaineering books where they say, Oh no, you can't judge whether people are doing it. And no, I I can judge.

  00:41:46 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  This was a.

  00:41:46 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Bad decision. I think it's good to read, read these books and and see when certain people die. There are certain good decisions and certain bad decisions, and I think a good decision is.

  00:41:56 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Is knowing yourself and having a plan with your guide about if I'm not doing well, I'm going to turn around and live. I think that's that's a good thing to do. Unless you're fine with dying and that's your choice. But.

  00:42:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It's it's such an interesting, interesting concept. It's it's hugely kind of mature and adults.

  00:42:17 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Approach of when looking at it, because we hear about summit fever, that effect when you're kind of, you're so focused on getting to the summit that you then end up taking ridiculous amounts of risk and and then that's where kind of you hear about people.

  00:42:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You know.

  00:42:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  People dying because of it and those.

  00:42:34

  I think.

  00:42:35 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Understanding it is a kind of a pre event indicator of like right this.

  00:42:38 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Is how I'll.

  00:42:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Be feeling however I'm I must you know. I'll put things in place to to stop it from, you know, from from living out. You know that kind of like Summit chase when when actually the conditions aren't right for it is is.

  00:42:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It's really huge.

  00:42:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Hugely beneficial to that people.

  00:42:55 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You know should should hear about and it should be discussed more because.

  00:42:59 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Because you're also putting your guides at risk if you if you don't have control of yourself, Brian.

  00:43:02 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Exactly.

  00:43:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, yeah. And and social social media. Any of the shows that kind of the summit shots, you know, I've I've definitely felt myself guilty of that in.

  00:43:11 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  The past where.

  00:43:11 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  I've just been like, I just want.

  00:43:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  To get.

  00:43:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  That summit shot it's, you know, it's. Yeah.

  00:43:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Becomes all-encompassing, but it's yeah.

  00:43:17 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So my my hiking my hiking tent mate or Denali had an interesting approach to it. So we went with Alaska Mountaineering School, which is a great organisation. They they run good trips you know based.

  00:43:27

  Used.

  00:43:28 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  In right next to Denali, Talkeetna so so their infrastructure is good. But the reason he chose them again. Counterintuitive, he said. I chose them because of all of their negative reviews and and I try to go. So why? Why did you like the negative reviews as well? The negative reviews that somebody who's going to go and complain not because of organisation recruiter and think they're complaining.

  00:43:48 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Because they got turned around. Yeah. Says I want to go with the guide company that has the backbone to say, hey, you're a risk to your tent mates and your risk to our guide.

  00:43:58 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  For whatever reason, and it's safer for you and better official for us, for you to turn around. Maybe they could have summoned it, right? Yeah, there. There's a chance that you could summit, but if you have a summit day, that's 1820 hours versus a summit day which is 10 or 12 hours. It's a very different amount of risk that you're creating.

  00:44:18 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  For yourself and for the team.

  00:44:19 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And for the guys, definitely.

  00:44:21 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So I thought that those are kind of.

  00:44:23 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Interesting.

  00:44:25 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  It's such a a huge, huge. I mean I'm. I'm just sat here scribbling notes right down right now because that's it's such a good, you know, piece of piece of advice I think in general you know if you kind of you're looking looking for the kind of the the information which is going to you know keep ourselves in, in, in balance when we're taking these we take these risks.

  00:44:46 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, there's there's so much there could unpack, you know, from psychology to performance, you know, to to, I think, to life, life goals in general, but.

  00:44:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah. Wow. Thanks. Kind of, you know, all struck now that's that's gonna I'm gonna think about that for the next few hours and I guess so to to end.

  00:45:07 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  With the the.

  00:45:08 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Probably the most challenging question is is what's next after Everest?

  00:45:14 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Hard one to to finish up with, OK.

  00:45:18 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So. So I'll make it easy. I think the the mountain that's most in my mind and probably more important to me than Everest is to climb mount, no shock in Afghanistan. Yeah, not no shock is that tallest mountain in Afghanistan.

  00:45:29 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  It's 7495 metres, so it's probably the top 50 list of mountains globally. Certainly there are a lot in Pakistan, India and China that are taller, but after those three countries there's very few mountains that there's height, right? So it's it's very, very tall mountain. And I think it has the unique distinction of being the tallest mountain.

  00:45:49 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  That's been skied up.

  00:45:51 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And.

  00:45:52 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So there are these tonne of these amazing Polish climbers that do all sorts of things that you have never thought about, right. So I think in the 70s, a Polish team skied up the mountain and then they skied down.

  00:46:05

  Wow.

  00:46:07 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So some guys went back to trying to reproduce that, but I think the snow conditions weren't there. They still made a pretty cool video of the attempt.

  00:46:14 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  But that that the Polish team did that I thought was was really great. And you know the other thing after Evers is just going to be to keep promoting Afghan peaks and see, you know, instead of just being in balmy on, you know, the security situation Now, it is possible to start skiing in a lot of other areas, wouldn't have been before.

  00:46:34 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  So really just growing the skiing and mountaineering skill sets across Afghanistan.

  00:46:39 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  And.

  00:46:39 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  You know, creating the precursors for for tourism and and just getting Afghan people to enjoy.

  00:46:44 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, that's fantastic. I I think one thing, one thing I definitely saw when when when I visited Bamiyan and and and at the Central Highlands was the potential for tourism and almost yeah, I thought kind of the Alps is so, so kind of crowded some days and you look at you walk down shamley and.

  00:47:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You can't really find anywhere to to get lunch or coffee or just or, you know, or just hang out somewhere because it's always so, so busy, which is it's given a bad thing. But when I, when I was in in Bama and I was thinking like this has got the same same vibes as shamanic it, you know, it's the same. It's a beauty, it's the the culture, the, the.

  00:47:24 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  The feeling, but I would I would love to see, you know, kind of central Highlands in Afghanistan and become become almost like a, you know, a similar shamani because it was, it's got it's so much untapped potential there.

  00:47:39 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah, it's it's a.

  00:47:39 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Beautiful vision. I just love to keep working towards that. That's that's really.

  00:47:41 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Keep.

  00:47:44 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  What what this is all about for me?

  00:47:46 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Yeah, fantastic. Well, great to talk to you. I want to make sure the show notes have got all of the links in to the charity to your background. And where's where's the best place that people can follow your your Everest journey on now on on.

  00:48:00 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Social media.

  00:48:00 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Yeah. So I think I think the best place is probably on Facebook. So Afghan peaks has a page on Facebook, we have an Instagram account. So we're doing some stuff there. I'm putting some stuff up on LinkedIn, but Facebook's the best, and then we do have our website, which is WWW dot.

  00:48:20 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  Back antiques.org and there we're accepting donations. You'll follow. There's new clips there, about Denali and some of.

  00:48:25

  And you.

  00:48:28 Sam Sidiqi, mountaineer aiming to be the first Afghan to summit Everest

  The races we sponsored as well.

  00:48:32 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  He was really great chatting with Sam and finding out exactly how he planned to Summit Everest from the Tibet side. If you want to see how.

  00:48:38 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  He's getting on.

  00:48:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You can find the links to his website and social.

  00:48:41 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Media accounts, that's.

  00:48:42 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  Shown it below. See.

  00:48:43 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

  You next time.

You might also like: