180° South Page #2

plastic surgeons and CEOs,

and, you know, they pay $80,000,

and they have Sherpas who put all the ladders in place,

and 8,000 feet of fixed rope.

You get to a camp

and you don't even have to lay out your sleeping bag,

it's already laid out,

with a little chocolate milk on the top.

And the all purpose of climbing something like Everest

is to affect some sort of spiritual and physical gain,

but if you compromise the process,

you're an a**hole when you start out,

and you're an a**hole when you get back.

Yvon and Doug should be

in Patagonia when I get there.

They said I'd be welcome to a warm blanket

and a hot meal on my way to Corcovado.

Doug lives here full time with his wife Kris,

and Yvon will be down there helping them with a big project

they've been working on for almost 2 decades.

Yvon also told me that the ice on Corcovado could be

completely melted if I get down there any later than December,

and that can make it really difficult to make the summit,

which brings up one minor detail:

I've never climbed on ice before.

Even if I had, I still need a crew

for something like this,

and I couldn't think of anyone better than my 2 friends:

Timmy O'Neill and Keith Malloy.

And you could check it by going like this,

it's going to be a little brusque, but watch.

- You see ? It works like that.

- Yeah, yeah !

So, if the jugs were mysteriously disintegrated,

you would drop on the gri-gri

and it would stop you instantly.

Yeah.

Timmy has climbed all over the world

and put up record breaking ascents in Yosemite valley.

He has climbed "El Capitan"

in 3 and a half hours.

Even great climbers can take days.

Keith quit the Pro Surf Tour

about 6 years ago,

and since then, he has devoted himself to discovering

new surf spots around the world.

He has been chased by grizzlies in Canada

and shot out by rebels in the Spice Islands.

He's a man of few words,

but if there's any surf down there,

this guy will find it.

We thought a good warm up for Keith would be

the North American wall on "El Capitan".

Yvon made the first ascent of this route

back in 1964,

when it's considered

the most difficult rock climb in the world.

It's still no cake-walk,

which was interesting

because Keith hadn't climbed much at all,

not to mention, the guy is afraid of heights !

We felt like climbing had no worth to society what so ever,

we didn't want to be part of the military industrial complex.

Life was pretty easy in the 1960s,

I mean, you could buy an automobile for 15 bucks

and live out of your automobile

and camp out in Yosemite

and then, here were these great walls,

that hadn't been climbed,

that were as big and as smooth and as difficult

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