Beck Weathers Interview — Transcript

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1. 0:01foreign
2. 0:03[Music]
3. 0:08we got back from Everest everybody and
4. 0:11their cousin is going to get contacted
5. 0:13to write something about this and pretty
6. 0:15much all before the bodies get cold but
7. 0:18the problem I had with that one was I
8. 0:20had no idea how the story ended because
9. 0:22for me at least uh the stuff on the
10. 0:24mountain while it was interesting is
11. 0:26just sort of the the beginning of what
12. 0:29was going to happen and I didn't know
13. 0:30whether this was going to turn out
14. 0:31ultimately to be a tragedy or whether it
15. 0:34was going to turn out to be a story with
16. 0:36a happy ending and frankly I just had a
17. 0:39few things in my life that needed to be
18. 0:41addressed and if a story is worth
19. 0:43telling it's going to be worth telling
20. 0:44four years or ten years after the fact
21. 0:47uh if you got to do it right then it's
22. 0:49probably uh you can go ahead and skip it
23. 0:51uh I I really had not decided I decided
24. 0:55I probably would not write a book
25. 0:56because I thought that the story
26. 0:58wouldn't occurred on the mountain had
27. 1:00been pretty much gone through and Ad
28. 1:03nauseam and there have been a couple of
29. 1:05very good books written John crack hours
30. 1:08Into Thin Air and then David beshears
31. 1:11High exposure that documented uh the who
32. 1:16when why where how slowly I turned step
33. 1:19by step uh events up there and thrashing
34. 1:23through that one more time really wasn't
35. 1:26going to serve any purpose but when I
36. 1:28ultimately wound up being interested in
37. 1:30was
38. 1:32literally the story of those individuals
39. 1:34who wind up remaining because that's a
40. 1:37part really that rarely gets told
41. 1:39although it certainly is on the minds of
42. 1:41individuals that go up there and in
43. 1:43essence what is it that drives people to
44. 1:47put themselves at higher risk what price
45. 1:50is paid by themselves and by their
46. 1:52family and then when you get back and
47. 1:55you're
48. 1:55bodies destroyed and your relationships
49. 1:58are destroyed and you don't know that
50. 2:00you'll ever work again or you're going
51. 2:02to be in custodial care for the rest of
52. 2:04your life how do you manage to put
53. 2:06yourself back together you know how do
54. 2:08you get through that and ultimately you
55. 2:10get to be a functioning person again
56. 2:14mm-hmm