Ben Carlson tries to say yes when life presents an opportunity. He also makes great ice climbing training tools.

I wanted to climb some big peaks. It was early 2000 and I enrolled myself in this month-long trip to the Indian Himalayas. I was 23 and living in NYC in the living room of a railroaded two-bedroom with two roommates. I made $280 a week doing a lighting fellowship at Lincoln Center, but somehow scraped together enough money to get myself to Seattle, and then New Delhi. It’s 19 hours from Seattle to New Delhi, and then it was three days of bus rides to the start of the trail. I remember next to the bus were fields and fields of low weeds. I looked closer and realized all of it was marijuana. Holy smokes!

KLM had lost half of our team’s baggage. I happened to have both of my bags, but we were missing personal gear, group gear, tents, boots. We were hanging out in this town in the foothills of the Himalayas, waiting for KLM to find our baggage. Our stuff showed up all ripped and torn. Ropes had been cut. It was really bad. We made do with borrowing some gear from the Indian Mountaineering Federation.

We hiked for five days up to 12,000 feet, near the base of Nanda Devi. Our plan was to hit this place at the end of this valley called Zero Point, then go southeast over this big 18,000ft pass, and come down another glacier to another valley. We did a self-arrest class. It was fun to slide down a thing and self-arrest. My friend Tom and I went way up this snow field, and the head instructor, Jeffrey Post, came marching up the hill. He goes, “You guys can do this, but realize where we are and what this means to the rest of the team if you get hurt.” The whole expedition behavior thing: It wasn’t just being cool to your partner, it was thinking about the greater group. That was a wake-up call, not to be a 23-year-old idiot and go smashing down the slope.

Finally, we’re going over this pass called Kafni Col. It was a hard push to go over with the whole team to 18,600 feet. It’s this big, glorious thing. We hiked, climbed, and rappelled down. We got about halfway down this massive face and decided to call it a day. The sun was up, but everybody was sleeping because we had left at 11 the night before. We had four tents nestled on this rib of snow that dropped off thousands of feet on either side. That night, Jeffrey started having trouble breathing. We’re perched on the side of this face and there’s no way we’re gonna walk out of here. He’s coughing up pink stuff. We’re like, “Oh shit.”

So we put him in the Gamow bag, which would effectively lower him to about 8,000 feet with air pressure. It’s this tiny tube, 18 inches in diameter. You had to pump it with a foot pump and keep pumping. Jeffrey had to be in there all night. We took shifts through the night, pumping this bag, keeping this guy alive. He took it as an educational opportunity, teaching us what pulmonary edema sounds like. He would exhale, and you’d hear the gurgling. We got through the night, packed everything up, and kept rappelling down onto the glacier. Jeffrey started to get better and better as we got lower and lower.

We got back to the main Valley. The northern end went into Tibet. It was this main trading route between India and these villages, these mountains that couldn’t give a shit what the borders were, for eons. But all the trade in this valley had died out, so there’s all these ghost towns we were hiking through as we went down. And a lot of donkeys. We were camping in dirt, no tents, being careful where we lay in fields donkeys have been pooping all over. My gaiters were covered in shit. It sounds romantic to go to the Himalayas, climb these amazing peaks, but it’s just filthy. Everybody got sick, I had gotten horribly sick on the way in. I was introduced to the miracle of Ciprofloxacin.

Before the trip, I made arrangements with another participant, Tom. We were to go climbing for the month in India, and then climb another month in Europe. We got the plane from Delhi and flew to Amsterdam. I remember getting off thinking, “Oh my god, I have another month of this. I just want to go home.” I hadn’t been working for however long, I didn’t have any money. So I was like, “Well, we’ll just figure it out.”

The first thing we did was go to Chamonix. We’re like, “We’re gonna climb Mont Blanc.” But when we got there, we realized you can’t just roll up to the glaciers and camp. Everyone stays in these huts that are 90 bucks a night. We could barely afford the tramway up to the hut at Aiguille du Midi. You go up there and follow this knife ridge onto the glacier to start climbing Mont Blanc. And it’s not a short climb. We met this couple from Mexico. They’re like, “If we pay for your room at the hut, will you guide us to the summit?” I said sure. Why wouldn’t we? I mean, it’s just walking.

So we gear up to go to the hut. It’s not for the faint of heart. There’s a massive drop on the left side down the valley of Chamonix. To the right is the Vallée Blanche. It’s scary until it eases off to a walk to the hut. The wife was not having it. She was terrified the entire time. I had to almost pick her feet up for her and place them, put her crampons on for her, the whole nine yards. We finally get to the hut as it’s getting dark. Remember, most of these clients start at midnight, so we sleep for four hours after having the wine you’re supposed to have at these French huts. We wake up and all of the French guides have short-roped their clients, and they're running up this mountain, just yanking their clients up.

We had spent a month in India learning the “right way.” Meanwhile, these French are just sprinting up these peaks. We were flaking out the rope, tying the butterfly knot in exactly the right place. It got to the point where the French guys were like, “You need to get out of the way.” The whole time I’m having to coach this wife up. We can see Mont Blanc in the distance. I’m like, “There’s no way we’re going to make it. But we can go to Mont Blanc du Tacul.” So we hiked for another 25 minutes to get to the top of Mont Blanc du Tacul and got some great pictures. It was super fun. 

On the way down, the wife panics again. It was too much for her. We got back to the cable car late, and the tramway had closed for the day. So we’re like, “Oh no, how are we gonna get down?” We’re not gonna hike back to the hut and spend another $360 of this guy’s money. They finally sent a cable car up. The couple went home. We went straight to the bar and crashed in some field.

We ended up in the Dolomites. We ended up in Amsterdam for quite a while. We went to Rome. We went to Naples. Some of it was climbing, some of it was not. By the end, I was so tapped out, I just slept on park benches. I was totally homeless. When I finally flew home and my friend picked me up from the airport, she said, “I feel bad for whoever you sat next to, because you smell horrendous.”

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