Spotlight: It's the Climb
Alex Ho is a self-proclaimed geek, designer, and hippie from Australia with a strong belief that with "great power comes great responsibility." We caught up with Alex to talk about the story he told at our 'Wild' live show back in 2017, to relive the time he got lost in the Himalayan mountains while starting his attempt at Mount Everest.
Unravel: What brought you to Everest and what motivated you to begin to trek it? Have you always been interested in climbing—or was this trip the genesis of something?
Alex: Growing up with movies like Indiana Jones, shaped the foundation of my thirst for traveling. Before entering my final year of architecture school in 2012, I decided to follow in Indy’s footsteps and let architecture take me on an adventure. I volunteered with a local charity to build a school up in the Solukhumbu region of the Himalayas. To my dismay the school had already been completed upon my arrival in Nepal, so I lived and did other work in a small town outside of Kathmandu called Pepsicola (yes, there was a Pepsi factory there, a major source of income for locals).
But being in Nepal, you can’t escape Everest, you meet brave adventurers who had summited the mountain in a bar and hear plenty of scary stories of failed expeditions. The Himalayan mountains are alive and their spirit calls out to the people around it. It still felt so unknown, a place of holy men, of Nepalese and Tibetan culture. I asked one of my friends at the visitor’s center about what one has to do to start trekking Everest, and they told me someone else on staff had a cousin who was a Sherpa. They introduced me to Karma, who would go on to be my guide and friend on our journey.
Unravel: In all its beauty, was there any point where the place you were in felt truly, totally dangerous?
Alex: Where to start? Lukla is the small mountain town located at the base of the Solukhumbu region, and their airport has a short runway that runs off the edge of a cliff. Before even arriving, my mom had shown me a recent article of a local flight that had crashed into the cliffside due to poor visibility. I still remember watching videos of planes do a U-turn because they didn’t pick up enough speed to make it off the runway safely. Once you are actually making the trek, you are at risk for avalanches, the possibility of being knocked off the side of the mountain by a Yak, getting food poisoning from eating unrefrigerated meat, or getting altitude sickness from being 5,600 meters high. If you get stranded in the Himalayan mountains with just a tiny torch in -25 degrees Celsius, it’s likely you’ll be lost for good.
Unravel: At what point did you realize you were on an avalanche prone mountain? How did it feel to watch other climbers decide to turn back while you persisted?
Alex: Early on in the trek you could see dust clouds caused by avalanches in the distance. I’d never seen one first hand, and while you could hear a rumble every now and then, eventually you’d hear it so much that you just stop giving it a second thought. It was only when I was midway up the mountain on all fours that I heard a loud thundering sound, and I looked over to see clouds of rock and dirt shrouding the mountain next to us. In that moment I realized all the mountains here are the same, as I watched Karma, my guide from the volunteer center jumping from rock to rock causing his own mini slides next to me. As the others one by one chose to descend and turn back, I just thought: they don’t know what they are going to miss out on. And they really missed out on a lot.
Unravel: Miley Cyrus famously sang, “it’s the climb.” After your experience do you find this to be true?
Alex: Funny, the lyrics of the song do mirror the moments you go through and the things you tell yourself to keep going, because there is no looking back. That journey you go on, the people along the way, and each hurdle you get through bring you back a changed person. It’s kind of an inspirational song… my experience on the other hand was very intense and adrenaline fueled, more like Miley circa 2019.
Unravel: What inspired you to tell your story? Did you learn anything about yourself or your story through this process?
Alex: The theme definitely hit a nerve. 'Wild' evokes such thrilling sensations, your adrenaline begins to pump, your heart begins to race. These were all of the same sensations I experienced being lost in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to share that with the audience, to take them on my journey as I relived the moment on stage. I think reflecting back, it really dawned on me that I nearly died a couple times and no one would have found me! When I really think deeply about the whole experience, I can see how it shaped the person I am today; I am always ready to jump into the unknown for that adventure, but maybe I’d be a little more prepared this time round. This process of writing it all down and then telling the story, has made me appreciative of the experience as a whole.
Unravel: What did the experience of sharing your story in front of an audience mean to you? How did you feel afterwards?
Alex: There are the memories, nostalgia, and the lessons realized afterwards when you do a deep dive into storytelling. You analyze the key points and structure it in a way so it’s clear to people. At the same time, the whole story became clearer to me as well, and though thinking back, it was a pretty stupid thing I had done, to leave the path I was on, ending up in a situation where I could have died multiple times…but taking the audience on the journey with me just makes me appreciate the experience much more.