Karl Egloff is a Swiss-Ecuadorian athlete, Mountaineer, cyclist and mountain guide who is best known for his speed ascents of the highest mountains in the world, including the Seven Summits. In this episode, we're venturing into the world of FKTs, Fastest Known Times for mountain ascents. Karl Egloff is a mountain guide who was virtually unknown outside his home in Ecuador until 2014 when he set the FKT for running up and down Kilimanjaro in Africa. Now, the previous record was held by a legend of the sport Kilian Jornet, and since that time Karl has broken two more records of Kilian, including the recent ascent and decent record on the mountain of Denali.
Karl Egloff is a Swiss-Ecuadorian athlete, Mountaineer, cyclist and mountain guide who is best known for his speed ascents of the highest mountains in the world, including the Seven Summits. In this episode, we're venturing into the world of FKTs, Fastest Known Times for mountain ascents. Karl is gradually breaking the FTK records originally held by legend, Kilian Jornet.
In this episode we learn about how Karl got stared in climbing and speed running, his success and humility and the fine line between comfort zones and risk.
In this episode we cover:
Selected links and books from the episode:
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Gary Bertwistle: Karl Egloff is a Swiss-Ecuadorian athlete, Mountaineer, cyclist and mountain guide who is best known for his speed ascents of the highest mountains in the world, including the Seven Summits. In this episode, we're venturing into the world of FKTs, Fastest Known Times for mountain ascents. Karl Egloff is a mountain guide who was virtually unknown outside his home in Ecuador until 2014 when he set the FKT for running up and down Kilimanjaro in Africa. Now, the previous record was held by a legend of the sport Kilian Jornet, and since that time Karl has broken two more records of Kilian, including the recent ascent and decent record on the mountain of Denali. Karl, it's a great honor. Welcome to the Inspiring Lives Podcast.
Karl Egloff: Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's so nice to talk to you on the other side of the world. You are in Australia. I'm here. I'm sitting in Ecuador. This is amazing.
Gary Bertwistle: You have built your reputation for speed, ascents of high mountains, including the Seven Summits. Why have you combined climbing and speed running? It's an odd thing to combine. Why did you do that?
Karl Egloff: Well, it's a big coincidence in my life. It's not that I planned to do that. I guess when I was 15 and people told me there are some crazy people running up the mountains, I would have laughed. Actually everything came together - I am a son of a mountain guide here in Ecuador. I have Swiss roots. I grew up with both cultures here in Ecuador and my father made his living actually by guiding on the weekends. So he took me from a very early age up to the mountains. I don't even remember when I started climbing the first time and my father always said, "Do never run on the mountains, never put crampons on and try to be faster than your clients. They're going to run away and they never going to come and call us back and everything."
So I grew up the very traditional way to climb the mountains and I was starting to guide in Kilimanjaro five years ago and when I was there, I had some spare time and on that spare time I used to go jogging up to the summit and down. So it was quite a funny story behind it because people working on Kilimanjaro looked at me very weird. They said, "We have never seen someone jogging up to the summit here in Kilimanjaro." I said, "Well, I used to do that in Ecuador while my father was climbing the mountains." So on the... waiting on the refuge until he came back I had free time for me as a child.
So I did that when my clients were sleeping in Kilimanjaro and I summit a couple of times. Then when I returned to Switzerland, my boss said, "Karl, we heard that you climbed in the afternoon fast, the Kilimanjaro and on the way back, you return to the hut, took your clients up to the summit again." I said, "Yeah, but it was my spare time. I'm... I hope I don't lose my job". Then he said, "No, it's just amazing. We would like to sponsor you to try to break the speed record."
: This was the first time ever I heard about these words and I've never knew anything about records and record holders and nothing. So everything became a huge coincidence. I started to train and after a while, I came to Kilimanjaro back trained and hoping to make a good time. Then I heard about Kilian Jornet and I said, "Wow, this is an amazing athlete. I've never heard from him before." Then I really said, "Okay, this is my shot, this is my opportunity. I should go, I should try." Then I broke Kilian's record and everything began to roll and I was not conscious while I was going after it and how big it was and then... how everything came to be later on with the Seven Summits.
Gary Bertwistle: Did you always climb at speed, Karl? Even when you were first starting out on Kilimanjaro, were you intentionally going at speed or were you just climbing quickly? I think there's a difference in the psychology of it. Were you intentionally trying it up to the top as quickly as possible or were you just climbing... you were just faster than others?
Karl Egloff: No. Definitely, I started guiding very early here in Ecuador and worldwide and while I was guiding, I was always going as slow as possible with my clients. But in my spare time I always was trying to break my best time, my personal best and I did not know that there were really world record holders and times to beat. So I was always doing my best effort to be as fast as possible. But later on I've noticed that there were records to break.
Gary Bertwistle: You mentioned your father Charlie, who as you said, is a renowned Swiss Mountaineer in Ecuador, when he took you along to those expeditions being in the mountains, what do you remember? What did the mountains bring to you as a child?
Karl Egloff: Well, my father was not a typical father and normally fathers, they are very skeptical with the kids... don't climb this, you can fall, don't go there, you can die. My father was completely the opposite. He said, " You should go up there if you want to be a guide one day." I said, "Yeah, but I did not bring my harness with me." He said, "You should anyway. Because if you want to be a guide you need to climb this and you have to be fast here and you have to be carrying a lot." So I was always growing up with challenges with my father.
He took me since I was a child to the mountain, what I remember is the climbers those days, I'm talking about the '80s and '90s. They were a different climbers than today. They were carrying everything up to the hut. They were taking so much food to the mountain. The gear was much heavier and we were taking a lot of material up to the huts, always expecting one or two or three days waiting for the perfect day. Today everyone is climbing the very light way trying to be as less as possible on the mountain. So I'm happy I grew up with this traditional way of climbing because my father showed me since very early to carry a lot. Probably this is why I have a problematic back right now, but I started having a lot of stuff since I was 12 or 13. He said, "We have to carry this and that to the hut and probably if the weather is not good, we have to stay another day, so please carry this too." On the end I grew up that way.
Gary Bertwistle: Do you think, Karl, when you reflect back on that time, when you were starting out as a child, do you think your father and the means by which people climbed at that time, did that embed into you a sense of resilience and grit? Do you think that actually embedded this embracing hardship?
Karl Egloff: Yeah, I think so. Yes. Unconscionably I think yes because I grew up with challenges and we didn't... nobody here in Ecuador didn't know about this record of Kilian and the guys who did that before and all these challenges of going as fast as possible from the refuge should have, but unconscionably my father, even in his early ages, he always was writing down his best time to the summit and his said always here in our table, "I did three hours up there and normal clients do it within six hours." He was like, "Ah, I'm fast and I'm strong."
I grew up with that and it's funny because when I did my very first important world record, which was here Cotopaxi here in Ecuador, I came home and I remember I said to my father, "Father, I did a new world record going up and down Cotopaxi." He said, "What do you feel right now? You are a better man? You feel much more better than the others?" I said, "No, I just wanted to say that I did an amazing time". He said, "This is not good. No one is willing right now to climb with you the mountains because it's... you're going to scare every client by now with that time." I said, "Yeah, but it's good for other things." He said, "There's nothing good."
So actually it was frustrating for me because I thought it's going to be big news at home and it wasn't. But I grew up with this critics and this make me always be very conscious of what I'm doing, and today he's one of my biggest fans and he's always googling, what's next? Which one is the next month? How is it done? Where is it done? Actually it's a funny story behind.
Gary Bertwistle: From that, Karl, do you take a sense of humility in the fact that your father pushed you, had you do things the hard way, you built this resilience and grit yet was always getting you to keep your feet on the ground? Because I've heard you talk about what you've done, what you've achieved, but you talk about it in a matter of fact sort of manner. It's not a scouting or look at me. Was that humility sort of bred into you by your father? Do you think back in those days?
Karl Egloff: I'm sure about that because it does make you a better human being if you are fast on the mountains, on the end of the day you are good as a climber but probably you are not good in other things. So for me always it's like the entire thing. If you are a good father, if you're a great human being, you're good to others. If you are a runner, if you are... whatever you're doing in life, you have to do it the good way. On the end these are just opportunities, everyone is comparing me with Kilian for example. It's like you beat him here and you beat him there. This is... Kilian is an athlete. He's a global rockstar on running. So I'm not comparing myself as a runner with him because he's a much better runner.
But I grew up with the mountains and I'm used to the altitude, but it does make me better athlete and a better climber than him. I was just lucky that a lot of mountains are very high in altitude. Since then I started to figure out that if I want to do the very important records like Everest and Denali and all those, I have to really prepare myself much better. Not just the way here, I did it in Ecuador before I needed a trainer. I needed everything to do it. So I always try to be very conscious of what I'm doing and trying to be a better athlete every day. A better athlete involves in my opinion... I'm 38, I'm not 20 anymore, so it's not the result. It's the global thing. It's what you show your kids, what you do at home, how do you train, how you do your balance, your marriage and everything. This is a good athlete on the end of the day.
Gary Bertwistle: Let's talk about Kilian just for a second because there's a video of you on YouTube that talks about the fact that you contacted Kilian after you broke his record for the ascent of Kilimanjaro. You said, "Hey, let's meet up". He said, "Great idea". There is this astonishing video of you like two mountain goats racing up and across these incredibly huge mountains. What I'm interested in, Karl, is you do carry this huge amount of humility yet on that mountain, in that video, it looked like you were out to smash him. You look like the two of you were going and you were not going to be beaten by Kilian in that session on film. In fact somebody, a punter who actually saw the video, made that comment in the comment section on YouTube. Take me to that day. Was there a sense where you were out to prove something against Kilian? What was going on that day?
Karl Egloff: It's a funny story behind everything. Because after I did Aconcagua speed record, and this was February 2015, I decided to travel to Europe and go to this amazing place called Chamonix. Why not contact Kilian the big star and the guy who I was reading on magazines and I thought he's not going to contact me anyway. I wrote him an email and he wrote me back and he said, "Please let me know when you are here. This is my phone number. It would be great to meet you". I thought, "Wow, this is amazing". Probably going to really meet and this is what... how everything came together.
The funny story about this is that Kilian had a very tough days before. He was like doing photo shootings and training a lot. So I wasn't able to... three first days that I was there to meet him and then finally, exactly on the video, it was the first time I saw him because the producers of this video wanted to make it really as real as possible. So they said, "You cannot meet before... they put the camera on, they put my camera on and then the first time you see in the video that we hug each other is because it was the very first time. After the video, we met a couple of times and we train together and actually we run up to the summit of Mont Blanc together as a rope team. This was for me, like a very nice experience. This was the very first time I could really test myself, how Kilian was and how he moved on the mountain and where he was very fast and everything.
I was able to run up his favorite mountain because he was living those days in Chamonix. So he was climbing Mont Blanc almost every week. So he knew every single corner of the mountain and it was a really nice experience. The most... well, the nicest experience I had is he treated me like we would know each other since childhood and I was very thankful. We went home and I was renting a house there and he went to our house. We had dinner together and it was a message that this is a gentleman job and a gentleman sport and there is no rivalry behind on the end. I learned a lot about his achievements and what he has done and I write everything down. What time he started, what time did he push up to the summit and everything in it because this sport is... you have to know a lot of information before trying to beat the speed record.
You have to know a lot of things like what time he started, so we became friends and we saw each other this year in Sigama before the race in Spain and I said to him, "Kilian, I'm going in a couple of weeks again to Denali." His reaction was, "This is cool. I wish you the best and if you need any information, I have a couple of friends, probably summiting these days and they will have fresh information for you." So on the end people believe it's like he wished me the worst thing and it's exactly the opposite. On the end, I wish that he's still alive for a long time and every single record that he pushes or if I push it, it's going to be better because we have to try better and we have to try every time, more and more. This is the fun thing about it.
Gary Bertwistle: It's interesting. If we talk about Denali for a second, you said there was a point on Denali where you had to change your crampons on your shoes to help you get better grip. You said, "I went for the good gear because you don't want to take any risk". Because the comment you made was, "I've got a child at home so I went for the good gear and put on these crampons".
Get anyone who sees you with Kilian on the mountain top racing with each other across these hair string mountains up and down and these dramatic falls with nothing connecting you, would say that you take a huge amount of risk, yet you put those crampons on Denali saying, "Oh I better put the good gear on because I don't want to take a risk." It kind of in my mind left me uncertain about how you determine what is risk because looking at the race with Kilian when you were training together, that was hugely risky. Yet when you're climbing on Denali you are putting on gear because you don't want to take a risk. How do you see risk?
Karl Egloff: Well, it's a relative question, but it's a good question because on the end, risk is a... it's for example, if you are a good climber and you are training on a level of 14 or 15’ers, but on a record day, you're climbing a 16’er, definitely you are risking because it's much higher than your comfort zone and on the end, there's speed records are exactly the same. If I'm training all the time on the mountain on a certain speed, on a certain temperature, on a certain glacier conditions, and on the day of the record, everything is the opposite, I'm already risking before starting. So, on Denali for me was absolutely clear that the most dangerous thing about Denali is not the terrain. It's not the conditions. It's really the temperature because I'm an Ecuadorian. I live here almost every year, all year in summer. So for me having this very tough wind conditions and very cold temperatures up on the summit can be deadly or can be really dangerous for my toes.
So what I tried is to be as fast as possible on those sections on the mountain that I was not risking anything about weather conditions. On the end you are running so light that you are taking just the very minimum with you and this makes you already a risky mountain climber because you don't have two or three layers extra on your back. Probably you have just one more layer and nothing else. This risk definitely if you are putting the risk in a video, everything looks risky for those who are not used to this terrain. For example, if I see a video of someone climbing any world, it's already a lot of risk behind.
For us on Chamonix we had a lot of fun together, but I think that we were not risking too much. We were having fun, we were focused, we were doing our best performance, but we are not outside our comfort zone. Outside of our comfort zone was, for example, this year when I did the South wall of Aconcagua conditions were so tough. Then at the end we were not even able to film, in the end I had a frostbite of third level. We came out of the wall scared and I lost a lot of weight and at the end a week later we were sitting together after the South wall of Aconcagua and we were looking to each other. My teammate and me, we said like it was way too risky. This is definitely not our comfort zone and it was far too much and in the end you are scared and you are not even enjoying it anymore.
Gary Bertwistle: So many people would say that growth comes from being uncomfortable. Growth comes from being outside your comfort zone.
How do you frame getting outside your comfort zone to being too risky? Where you said, "This is outside of our comfort zone". Yet that's where the growth comes from for most people in today's vernacular around self-improvement, how do you then balance up enough comfort versus getting outside your comfort zone, but then with what you do being too risky?
Karl Egloff: It is a great question because in the end your comfort zone is what you are used to train. This can be uncomfortable if you are training every day, if you are training too hard, if you are training on very cold temperatures, if you're training on high altitude but you are still trying to control it. In the end what I want the most is to suffer while I'm training. I'm definitely going way out of my comfort zone when I'm training, when I'm spending nights and nights and nights on altitude and training every day and don't even recover that much because I'm sleeping in huts. But on a speed ascent and on an FKT, I really want to be as close as possible to my comfort zone because you never know what can happen.
I give you an explanation. When I did Elbrus, I was climbing up the mountain and I had four places where I had water and something to drink when I left behind. When I was running up the mountain, everything got frozen. I really don't have anything, no food, no drink, no nothing. Everything was completely frozen. In the end you plan everything on detail and everything start to go bad that day, and then I had to deal with cramps. I had to deal with heat. My body, my mind, my... I had a lot of headache and I made it to the lower section of the mountain and I was happy that Elbrus is not a big distance.
But if something similar would have happened on Denali, probably I would have had to give up. Because there you cannot run 30 miles with cramps and with problems, with headaches and you're risking far too much. So this is what I'm talking about, about problems on an FKT. You are giving everything, you're trying to be as fast as possible and you're suffering all the time. But I think that you still can control what you're doing.
Gary Bertwistle: That's a great answer. Let's look to the future. I know Everest is on your plans, and in 2019 there were a lot of deaths from people on Everest who were climbing to the summit, who got caught in what they reported as being congestion.
With your plans to go for the FKT on Everest, does congestion feature in your planning? How do you get around it?
Karl Egloff: This is the same question I'm asking myself. Well you always try to avoid crowds always. Sounds very easy but it isn't. On Denali, when I tried to speed record, I had 350 climbers moving from one camp to the other, or summiting on that day because it was by far the best day of the season. So everyone tried to move that day. In the end, I had to overpass 350 on the way up and 350 on the way down.
You just don't want to lose that much energy because every time you step on a side of the path, you just lose a lot of energy and you lose much more energy if those people are moving so slow, because it's difficult if you communicate, if you gel and you'll say, "I'm going to pass," and they move around. Sometimes it's perfect, sometimes they are very friendly. But on the other side they can be climbers and I understand they are on the very limit. They are not able to move.So on the end, it's my responsibility as an FKT runner to make their trip as safe as possible. So I'm the one who has to move on the side and I'm the one who has to look for a new path.
So we planned on Denali exactly what time are those climbers reaching? The most challenging part of Denali... on this talking about Denali would be the autobahn where the fixed ropes are. We said they got to be there at 8:15, 8:20, the first climbers. So we have to be five minutes before there. So this is how we planned exactly the time we were starting. We really made it one minute before the first climber arrived to the autobahn. So I had completely nobody on the autobahn and this made my ascend as safe as possible.
On the way down, I overtook everyone and they were not reaching the fixed ropes neither because they were halfway through. So in the end, everything has to do with plenty of verification and a little bit of luck, of course. On Everest, how I want to avoid this. This is a good question because on Everest, everything is different. On Everest, people cannot move for hours, not even a few feet. So I'm trying to summit probably those days they are not planning to summit. Probably it could be in autumn or probably could be in the afternoon has been a very late afternoon or in certain times of the day that probably you won't have that many people.
Gary Bertwistle: Do you... you obviously knew Denali, you'd mapped it out so you could visualize the climb. Do you ever spend your time visualizing what you're about to do? Do you spend time visualizing what might happen and visualizing yourself getting around that problem?
Karl Egloff Yes. I'm aware of all the risks. I'm aware of everything that can happen and I'm... mentally I prepare for it. I'm not lying to you if sometimes you doubt about yourself. You ask yourself is this is not the perfect day? Something could happen today? Or I don't feel 100% today? Or the media, they told that the storm can come in at 2:00, 3:00 PM and probably it's not the perfect day, but on the same time, you check to the media and you can see that the next days it will be worse. You always analyze and you need someone with your team sometimes to take these decisions.
: I always tried to travel with my teammates, Nicholas. Nicholas is a very renowned mountain guide here in Ecuador. He's the one in charge of guiding or showing how to guide new guides. So actually he's an instructor and we always analyze everything like this is okay for today, the nature is going to hold and you are probably 60% today, but tomorrow you will be 50 because you are not sleeping well, you're not eating well, and on the end you have to put all the cards on the table and see like, "Okay, for tomorrow things look good. Probably they don't look perfect."
You have to deal with those things on your huts. Sometimes you are not sleeping one or two or even three nights before because you are scared. But I think this is part of the game. I think to be a little bit scared makes you humble, makes you be much more aware what we can do with you on the mountain or bad decisions can do on the mountain, if you are not scared at all, that something is wrong. Even if I'm guiding, I... if I have this is a little thing in my head that could happen. This is good because it makes you much more human.
Gary Bertwistle: Just say you have a training day ahead of you tomorrow, Karl. You wake up in the morning and it's raining. Perhaps it's snowing, it's wet, it's freezing cold, it's really windy. It's just not a nice day to go training. How... what's the dialogue in your mind? How do you approach your day where you don't want to go training, but you know, you probably should.
Karl Egloff: That's a great question because it's the same question where you ask in life. If you're not going through good things and how do you wake up and do things happen? Or how do you... I don't know, like overtake this bad moments in life. If of course, if I'm training or if I want to climb a mountain in a training day and the weather and even myself, if I'm feeling sick, for example, I try to listen a lot of mine have to my body. On the end of that training day can bring you to bed for a couple of days or weeks. If you get a flu can get things worse. So on the end you have to listen a lot about your body. Of course, there are days that you have to train with bad conditions because this is exactly what you're looking for in the worst scenario on a mountain, for example the jet stream that you have on Denali, I don't have any place in Ecuador I can train for this 50, 60, 70 miles of winds on the summit, it's something that you cannot train with that temperatures here in Ecuador.
So this is definitely what I wanted when I was training for Denali is like willing to train in those days that it was really windy, there was really cold, the sun was coming in because I thought okay, this is probably going to help me on my mind if something similar is happening on Denali. Exactly this is what happened when we were reaching the summit on the FKT day. The wind was so strong that 90% of the climbers turned around that day. We just, we just took the next layer and the next layer in the next layer and we said, "Everything is on your mind. Close your eyes and keep going." On the end we made the summit and it cleared up. It was amazing for a few minutes, no wind, just beautiful, sunny and on the end, this was the answer of your question. Sometimes you have to go through bad things. So the sun is coming up later on.
Gary Bertwistle: That's a good answer. With all the records you've set, Karl, all the training you do, it seems... it's a solo endeavor for you. You need to spend a lot of time by yourself. You race on these FKTs is a solo endeavor. Is solitude and being by yourself an important part of Karl's DNA?
Karl Egloff Yes. Something that it's very difficult for me is to spend time alone on the mountain and to climb the mountain in solo. I'm a family man. I'm actually someone who is always planning with my family to do next things in life. Something that I was really missing is the communication on Denali while I was climbing because you can have a cell phone but you cannot phone because there are not enough satellites to connect your phone call. The first human being to connect after the world record was my wife and trying always every day to chat and to talk to her at night.
Karl Egloff: When I'm running up on the mountain, I think everything, like nothing can go wrong today because I want to go home, I want to be a good daddy, I promise my son to come home soon. This is what life makes it, even more and more difficult if you have kids and if they are growing, if they are asking for you, if they are missing you. So this is what holds me to be all year around traveling for climbing and to speed up. On the end, what we do at home is we would put all the cards on the table and we say that, "This is the next goal and this is the next goal in between, we will be spending holidays together in between. We will be working for my travel agency, I will be a normal father to be as much as possible here at home, to have these routines with my son, to take him to the kindergarten and back, and to feed my kids here at home and bring them too bed."
On the end to be a normal daddy and when I'm going out for a project, I really focus on those projects that be acclimatization I can do here in Ecuador and when I'm going out, I just go for it as fast as possible. Try to spend as little time as possible on the mountain and be as safe as possible.
Gary Bertwistle: Just to finish this up here, Karl, when I hear people interview you, I've seen stories about you around the world. Invariably people say you came from nowhere. People all knew Kilian, but this Karl Guy came from nowhere. Why have you been so successful? When you look at yourself and analyze yourself with all the humility you carry, why do you think Karl has been so successful to break so many records of a living legend like Kilian? What do you put that down to?
Karl Egloff: Well, it's a nice question and on the end and I'm a lucky man because I grew up here in Ecuador. I was a mountain biker professional for eight years. I was racing for my country. I was always training a lot. I was traveling a lot for the mountain bike national team, but I was never more than an average mountain biker. But I was always very good on climbing mountains. I was always very strong climbing since I was a kid, this is why my father always pulled back and he said like, "Slow down child because I don't want you to die on the mountain, but you will have your time one day to run up."Everything came together with this Kilimanjaro trip that I told you. After seeing what Kilian has achieved, I said, "Yeah, I should risk it and train for that and probably just go day by day. The next one would be Aconcagua."
Aconcagua was a mountain I already knew, even much better than Kilian because I was guiding like my sixth or seventh season those days. So I knew that mountain very good. I said, "If this was a coincidence on Kilimanjaro, I should go for the next one." On Aconcagua I was 57 minutes, almost an hour faster than Kilian. Then I started really to believe that, "Okay, I have something into myself that I never knew about it. I never knew that I can run. I never knew that I'm so fast on the mountains, so tried to forget Kilian. Kilian is the superhero that nobody can touch." On the end, it's a barrier that you put in front of you and not talking even bad about him because he's a superstar, but it's... you put your limits and on the end I said, "Okay, if I broke Kilian's record Aconcagua, next time I'm going to break my own record."
Karl Egloff: On the end this is exactly how training is, it's like in Strava you are so good and you are first. So next day tried to beat Usain record and be better on that. I think that I came from a country which is pretty unknown in sports and this is why I had this chance to fly with this success. I'm sure if I would have come from the same town as Kilian, things would have been different. I'm sure if Kilian wouldn't exist things would be different because Kilian is the barrier. Kilian is the guy who nobody can beat and this is how it got interest. Media got interested when they heard there is a guy, I don't know his name but there's a guy who broke Kilian's record and this is how everything is like can coming together. You need a story to write another story and this is the funny thing about it. I think this is... I'm a coincidence on Kilian's career. I'm a coincidence on this sport and I took this chance and I developed this chance and I'm working hard that this chance, is going to complete the seven summits.
Gary Bertwistle: Got a question for you. So last question to finish this up, cause I'm very conscious of your time Karl. I've seen the videos of you on the mountains and you are going at pace. You race in the FKTs at pace. I suspect during that time you have to be very conscious of where your next foot is going to in order to keep a firm hold of the ground. When you're racing. Do you ever still just go to a mountain to be on a mountain and not race, but to enjoy, what the mountain brings to you to reminisce about your childhood, your dad? Do you ever just climb to climb and enjoy the surroundings? Or are you the sort of person where if there's a mountain in front of you then it's on?
Karl Egloff: No, absolutely not because I'm happy, really happy that I grew up with this traditional way of climbing. This is what a lot of runners do not do. They start to run and then suddenly they said, "Well, if I can run fast here on the street, why not climbing up the mountain as fast as possible." You lose this connection to the mountain, this breathing on the mountain. This tradition that something can go wrong, weather can change, things can get heavy. I'm a mountain guide and I'm still a mountain guide because I think that I learned at these values of helping others to summit, to helping motivating other people to. For example, three ago I was leading a huge expedition of amputees from the U S climbing Cotopaxi up and down in almost 20 hours. What I do in an hour and a half.
I'm just trying myself to be very patient and trying to give my best as a human to help others to achieve. This is the thing that makes me humble because at the end if I would be just training going for the FKTs, I would not compare those days that I'm really having fun on the mountain and just walking. Today as a father, I enjoy almost a lot when I'm climbing with my child on my back going very easy and just enjoying, explaining this is this tree, this is this bird and I'm trying to show him why I love the mountain and not because he watches me on television and he sees like all these pictures, Karl running up the mountains. This is the way we are going to the mountains. No, this is the way I do the projects. But on my 99% of the days I try to be very connected to the mountain.
Gary Bertwistle: So interesting isn't it? That's just a beautiful answer for us to teach our children what we love about what we do. Karl, this is... I find you a fascinating guy. I think it's so unusual to get an insight to someone who's doing something as extreme as you do at the level you do with what you're achieving up against some monumental competition. But it sounds like you compete with yourself more than others. I just think this is such a great story for inspiring lives to show the possibilities how all of this came out of something that you were born to as a child and loved, and you've continued to push yourself in and out of your comfort zone. It's great. Thank you so much for your time, Karl. It's been a real pleasure speaking with you, hearing your story and I hope we can keep in touch as you continue your project because you've got some more big mountains in front of you.
Karl Egloff: Thank you so much for your nice and kind words. It's a huge privilege for me and thank you for the opportunity to talk to the other side of the world that I have on my bucket list one day to visit Australia. It's just a huge pleasure. Being such an incredible, good interviewer I was waiting to your website. It's amazing what you have achieved. So thank you. On the other side too, for this opportunity and I'm really, sure we going to keep in touch, I promise to get better in my English and get to know you one day in person.
Gary Bertwistle: Karl, we're going to follow your adventures. When is the next climb in your project? How far away is that do you think?
Karl Egloff: Well, right now I shut my season off after Pikes peak Colorado. This was late August and right now I'm starting to build again. So the next FKT planet will be Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia, which is your continent. This is planned to be done on early 2020. So probably in January I will be traveling to Indonesia to try Carstensz Pyramid as fast as possible.
On February I'm going to guide different expeditions on Aconcagua to use it also as a training. In autumn of 2020, I'm probably hitting for my first time Himalayas. It looks like, Karl why did you wait so much? Because it's very expensive. This is the only question I don't see. Only answer that I have. Himalayas is very expensive. So on the end probably it looks like we will have a chance to visit on autumn 2020 for the first time in Himalayas. Of course I will try to use this chance to make an FKT in Himalayas. I don't want to name anyone because I'm still checking which one, I don't know which one. This as a training for Everest approach, which will be 2021 or 2022. This is the next goals to come.
Gary Bertwistle: If people want to follow all these adventures to check out what you've done, where you're at now and what you're about to do, where is the best hub for people to learn more about Karl?
Karl Egloff: Well, thank you so much for mentioning it. Well it Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. You can find me, Karl Egloff and I will be very pleased to answer you if I have a website also. KarlEgloff.com and I'm really happy to have new followers and to keep up with the updates and making my trainings viral and put it on social media so you can follow me.
Gary Bertwistle: Karl. It's been a real privilege. Thank you for joining us on Inspiring Lives. It's been great, man. We'll keep in touch with you. Thank you.
Karl Egloff: Thank you, Gary. Thanks so much. Hugs to everyone. Bye.