Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of Hey Human podcast.
This is episode 418, and my guest is
Rick French.
Rick is the cofounder of Pack Paddle Ski
Adventures.
He facilitates adventures
to over 30 countries on all 7 continents
with people from all over the world. He's
also on the board of directors for Journeys
of Solutions,
enabling travelers to, quote, assist people and communities
in the developing countries they have encountered on
their trips with the goal to improve quality
of life with infrastructure
improvements, access to clean water,
support for educational institutions, scholarship,
and training,
unquote, which is awesome.
We had a great conversation.
We talked about some of his more memorable
trips, including
meeting the Dalai Lama, dealing with a client's
broken leg at nearly 19,000
feet,
elephants, a plane crash, a sultan,
just so many stories, as you can imagine,
over the years
that he has,
come to collect.
I met Rick through Bonnie and Robin, who
were on episode
411,
and they went on one of the adventures.
They went to Mount Kilimanjaro,
both having had
experience with cancer, Bonnie having had cancer, Robin,
whose ex had cancer.
Anyway, after talking with them
and hearing about
the adventure they had, I knew I had
to talk to Rick, and, he did not
disappoint. What a man. What a really fascinating
and good human. I can't wait for you
to hear this episode.
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Thank you for listening.
I appreciate it. Be well.
Be kind. Be love,
and here we go.
Break French. Welcome to Hey Human.
Hi, Susan. It's good to see you. You
too. You look good this morning, Susan.
That's good.
I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Early for me. Where are
you right now?
I live in Western New York,
so it's just after lunch here.
It looks a bit humid out there.
Yeah. It's been pretty humid. It's getting close
to 90 today. Oh, no. It is. It's
yeah. I don't like it when it's this
hot. No.
Yeah. Mhmm. I feel like 75 in a
nice breeze. That's my happy place.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's like cooled out
again. Yes. We're all gonna have to move
north as the climate keeps getting hotter.
I know. I met somebody on a plane
once to Greenland and they were headed to
Greenland so they could buy some land because
they knew climate was gonna change. Of course,
you can't buy land in Greenland, but I
guess they didn't know that. Anyway so, yeah,
That that was
kinda wild. Yeah. That is that's really anticipatory.
Yeah. Alright. Exactly. That's way north.
Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's weird
that Greenland is icy and Iceland is green,
but that's a whole other story.
Yeah. Yeah. You probably know that story. That's
kind of a wild story. Yeah. Yeah. What
story?
Why it's called Greenland.
I don't know. Well, it was a the
marketing deal.
Eric the reg, one of his slaves got
killed. So he in revenge,
he killed,
somebody.
So the council in Iceland,
exiled him from the country.
So he had to leave Iceland. So he
sailed around, and he landed in Greenland. So
to get people to come to Greenland, he
went he sent people back and said, oh,
it's so green. You can raise cattle here.
There's farms.
Yeah. That's that's why it's called Greenland. It
was,
I don't remember, it's like this 1100 or
1300,
something like that.
Learn something new every day. Love it. Yeah.
Yeah. Because we we've kayaked over there where,
he landed where they lived. We've kayaked over
in Greenland to the ice cap there and
stuff. So
Oh. Yeah. Well, let's get into you. Where
were you born? How did you grow up?
Were you an adventurer from the get go?
Growing up is a question, isn't it? I
I know about that. It's still an ongoing
process. I was born in Western New York,
a little town called Avon.
So, yeah, started adventuring just as a kid
sleeping in the backyard under a tent that
we would make. And what was your first
big adventure?
I think the first big one
is when I left the country. It was
when I was 17 years old. We flew
over to see a friend in England. I
was just 17.
Small things after that, of course,
back then would have been
late sixties, early 7 early seventies.
You know, it's not like nowadays. So if
you just went to another state, that was
a a big adventure. Yeah. I just and
then went to college in Maine.
And as you guys went by,
took a bus across the country and
hiked a chunk of the Pacific Crest Trail
north of you. We did Oregon and Washington.
It's north of where you are. So that
was in college. Did your family have wanderlust,
or was this particularly your thing?
My dad was always we were in scouts
as kids, and I worked summer camps in
the Adirondacks.
So, yeah, my my dad always loved the
outdoors too. And as years went by, he
would go off this, you know, many, many
times. Yeah. He's been in Nepal with us,
you know, 5 or 6 times.
Yeah. He you know, Mongolia. He he went
all lots of places with us.
Well, I learned about you through
Bonnie and Robin and that they climbed Kilimanjaro
with you, and
that was an interesting story. And they kept
talking about you, and
I said to myself, that's somebody that's gonna
be a a good storyteller.
Let's get that going. So thank you for
being here and for
sharing your life.
Thanks, Susan.
Have you had every inoculation under the sun,
I bet?
Yeah. Probably.
Yeah. You know, we have to get a
bunch of different shots, but that's, like, not
really,
a big deal. I had a I was
just got back from Japan a couple nights
ago, and I had a, ear was closed
up so I couldn't hear again. I was
just at the doctor yesterday,
and the and the doctor's looking at it.
I was like, this is the first time
I've ever told someone I don't know what's
wrong, but I think there's something alive in
your ear.
So
it didn't end up being anything alive. I
was like and I was like, oh, that's
fairly interesting. Anyway, I'm like, well, pull it
out. He's like, I don't know if I
should.
Anyway, so yeah. What was it?
It just was an ear infection. It it
would it wasn't anything.
But we we just
but, yeah, you know, shots, different things. I've
been pretty lucky, you know, I've never had
dengue fever, never had malaria,
never had any hookworm, you know, some basic
stomach parasites and amoebas and things, but I've
been really lucky. Nothing unusual.
That's good. Well, let's jump into the adventuring.
When did you start your company? Why did
you start it? What was the mission at
the front end and and what is it
now? I got out of college in 1980
and even in high school, I I always
knew I wanted to do run it out,
do outdoors in some way for a job.
So after college for 5 years, I worked
around the country for programs like Outward Bound
doing,
taking kids, that were at risk population. Sometimes
we'd pick them up in the jails in
handcuffs, take them in the middle of the
swamp,
search them, and they'd spend 30 days. If
they did well, they got to go home.
So I did that from 80 to 85
all over the country.
And then during that period of time, my
brother I'm an identical twin.
So my brother was back here in New
York, and he
wanted to start an outdoor business too. So
he and my dad had already
kinda put that together in 85. They're like,
well, come back to New York and start
this outdoor business with us. So I moved
back to
to New York with that intention and, you
know, bought a house and needed redone, so
you had a cheap place to live.
And,
you know, initially, we just went to back
then, we just went to, his apartment and
pulled the drawer out and dumped it instead
of phone next to it. And that's how
we started, and then spent that winter making
our first couple canoes.
You know, back then, we taught cross country
skiing and backpacking,
small things. And then as the years went
by, it got, you know, bigger and bigger
till now we've been on all 7 continents
a few times. But that was the original
intention. It was quite a bit different than
it is now,
but the world was different back then.
The the point was just to enjoy being
outdoors with people.
And then as time went along, the attention
changed a bit in in that, you know,
realization as you get older at some point,
you just feel fortunate to have these amazing
gifts in in your life, and it's almost
like a responsibility,
not like an obligation way, but in in,
like, a a way of, like,
a way if you wanna share the things
that have come into your life feeling that
they're a gift.
So then the intention kinda changed to,
sharing more
of the experiences of the world and and
the adventures that could be had
and watching how it impacted people's lives so
much, you know, how it changed people's, as
you know,
you know, from the story of Bonnie and,
you know, Robin. I can't we have so
many stories
of lives that have been changed. It's it's
pretty huge.
So, yeah, there's a bunch of different types
of projects that developed over the years from,
you
know, wells in other countries to schools to
we just got back from building a dorm
at my, Tanzania friend's village
in Africa in Tanzania.
We were in Morocco in the fall, and
right after the earthquake, and it was it
was pretty intense.
People were not able to go into their
houses and stuff, and, Jaima, who works with
me, and I, we're like, this is just
often what happens is we travel somewhere and
it was just something comes to us, and
we can't really ignore it. And we just
couldn't go home
knowing there are people who didn't have homes
anymore.
So we we came home, we raised some
money, and don't and we donate all the
money from the trip. And I just got
a message last week that Rashid and his
family just moved into their home
in Morocco in the Atlas Mountains. But I
don't know so many projects,
schools
and
wow. I I don't know. Yeah. When you
are a person of the world.
I like that. I'm a person of the
world.
Yeah.
Go, Susan. Go ahead and ask.
When you're a person of the world, how
does that
shape
how you see the world at large in
its foibles and
fisticuffs.
And
how do you how how does that make
you Yeah. Does it egg you on and
and push you forward?
Oh, yeah. That's got you know, there's lots
of
pieces to that, but for sure,
the world is very, very small to me.
You know, when there's
a war in Ethiopia,
that's my friends.
You know, that's like people that are now
widows. You know, those are people,
you know, that have no food.
You know, when there's the earthquake in Nepal,
those are my friends' houses.
You know, when COVID hit, you know, my
Tanzania
friends that help us so much on the
mountain, they had no food. They were selling
the clothes. The world's very, very small. People
are the same all over the world.
That's kind of
like a, you know, worldview, but,
you know, there's a sense of, everybody
all over the world is the same.
Kids like to play,
people like to be loved, people like to
sit
with each other and be heard,
people like to laugh,
people all over the world are the same,
everybody just wants to be happy, so there's
that, you know, awareness.
Fortunately, in my world view, there's it's a
hopeful view
because if you listen to the media, which
is mostly
motivated by making profits,
so they scare people and are angry, and
then people believe that that's how the world
is, but that is not at all the
case of the world. Know, the case of
the world is people are amazing and beautiful.
99%
of the time, every story I could tell
you would be about someone who helped us.
Someone who, you know, we shared time with,
played cards with at Everest Base Camp and
Tibet.
And that way, my view of the world
is hopeful.
You know, that people people,
I think, in their nature
wanna be kind. They wanna share love,
which is much different than most people's view
of the world, but that's my that's my
experience.
I've been told I live in a bubble,
and my response to that is I like
my bubble.
I think it's the rest of the world
that lives in a bubble. I was just
gonna say everybody else lives in a bubble
because they're being fed a steady diet of
xenophobia and and Exactly. It's
heartbreaking to me, and people are
so afraid now. Your kids go to school,
and there's a sheriff outside, and there's metal
detectors, and the doors are locked. Like, what
message does that give? You know, that compared
to, like,
you know, a little kid in Japan or
especially a little the Tanzania kids, you know,
that are just so welcoming and come up
immediately and wanna hold your hand and sing
with you or twirl the hair on your
arm. Yeah. I don't know the answer to
all that. I just know that people live
very, very afraid and anxious.
That's not my experience of the world.
Have you been to the top of Everest?
No. No. No. That's like a big freaking
deal. No. I'll never go there.
Yeah. People are kind of if you don't
climb mountains, like, you might ask me that
question, but, you know, to go to high
altitude, it's above 26,000
feet,
what they call the death zone, that's like
a big deal. That's a Russian roulette
gamble, whether you live, die,
And, in the highest I bet is 20,000
feet.
Few times, and I have no interest in
going any higher. I don't really understand it
because at that altitude,
you don't feel good.
And even when I I like the physical
challenge,
but when it's a challenge, it happens because
of outside of my body and I'm feeling
crappy.
It's hard for me to enjoy the mountain,
so I have absolutely no interest.
We go to the bottom of Everest, which
is, like, close to 18,000 some, but yeah.
No. Never been Which is still pretty high.
It is still pretty high. That is true.
There are many high places. Because Kilimanjaro is
what? 18 or something? 19 340.
Yeah. Right off the top of your head.
I love that.
Been been there a few times, so I
know. Yeah.
For sure. I'm sure you're well versed in
recognizing when people are starting to have issues.
Oh, yeah. I bet they fight you, and
they don't wanna stop. But
Depends on the person. It depends on the
issues. You know, usually, if someone's bad enough
that they can't continue, no, they're not fighting
you. They want you to tell them they
can't continue.
They they want someone else sometimes they know.
They just like to be reinforced. Like, yes.
This is enough. This is not safe now.
Yeah. So not if someone still has enough
fight to say they wanna continue for the
most part, they're probably okay.
I love that. They're just looking for a
reason. They need you to tell them that
it's done. Sometimes.
Exactly. Yeah.
Mhmm. Yeah. My dear friend Damaru on the
way down from Kili one time,
he,
caught the toe of his foot and tripped
forward.
And I turned he we were at the
end of the line. I turned around and
went back. He's like, Rick, I think I
broke my leg, but people tell me that
a lot. And no one actually had broken
it at that point. They just hurt themselves.
So I'm like, oh, I don't know. But
first bad sign, it was it was Damiro.
Damiro is tough. He's not one that would
be a baby and say that. So I'm
like, okay. But people still tell me that.
And then he said, oh, I heard a
snap. That's like sign number 2. That's bad.
So then I palpated his leg, and there's
a huge dent in the front of his
one shin. I'm like, Dammer of Field, is
is that supposed to be there? He's like,
no. I'm like, yeah. You broke your leg.
So, yeah, we had to,
improvise a splint. We cut shoelaces out of
our boots and cut stuff sacks to make
rope and
took twine
and made a splint out of my friend
Youssef and I, we made took trucking poles
and made a splint, and then we put
them on,
sleeping pad and dragged them down the mountain.
It was snow too at that point
until 12 of the porters came up the
mountain with burlap bags.
And then we carried him down to the
base camp at 155.
We duct taped him into a stretcher
with a sleeping bag and a tarp because
he had to go over cliffs. We don't
want him to fall off the stretcher.
So
he was okay. He wasn't too she wasn't
too shocky or anything, just a little bit
of pain.
People always say, why don't you helicopter him
out? Well,
slight possibility you could get a helicopter maybe
from Nairobi. By the time you do that,
these guys could have them out. So, yeah,
we took 2 days and got them down
the mountain, you know,
eventually flew him home and he had some
surgery.
Yeah. Mhmm.
I'm just picturing being duct taped to the
to the outside of a helicopter
and being like, okay. You're good. Yeah. Well,
that was just we duct taped them into
the stretcher because when you're going over a
cliff, you're putting the thing, you know, kind
of vertical and you wanna fall off. Really,
really, we just
He was a good sport about it. They
never do that in the show MASH. That's
Yeah. There's a lot of things we probably
do in real life. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Yeah. Uh-huh. And you get to meet the
Dalai Lama?
I did. Yeah. 1, some of these things
happen because I sit in my living room
and every now and then ideas come to
me. And a couple of years ago,
I had this idea,
I'd like to see and look into the
eyes of the most spiritual person in the
world. So that, now, who would that be?
And the Dalai Lama popped in my mind.
So I'm like, I should go meet the
Dalai Lama. This is, like, how my mind
goes. I it wasn't really a practical or
thought out idea. It was just, like, that's
what I should go do. So then I
started looking into it, and I'm like okay
he lives in Dharamshala we could set up
a trip we'll go to Dharamshala. I've been
to India and Nepal a few times
and it's done great trekking there.
Hey. When there when we're there, we should
do something more than, just trek and see
the Dalai Lama. Let's,
let's, volunteer with the Tibetan refugees for a
while. So we did that too.
So yeah. But we didn't know a way
we could see the Dalai Lama. We just
knew we didn't even know if he'd be
there. So we set up this whole experience
to do that, and when I was coming
back from Everest Base Camp the year before,
it was after the earthquake in Nepal,
and my friend's houses had been,
damaged.
So but they so we're gonna help them
with their houses, but, Kami comes to me.
He's very, very devout Buddhist,
up in the Solokumbu
area,
You know, it's the Everest area. The Sherpa
people are and especially the older people, extremely
Buddhist,
very, you know,
ritualistic.
He's like, I should come with you. I
was like, okay.
And then my his other buddy, Lakpa,
says the same thing. I'm coming with you
too.
I never know what that actually means. I
just said, okay. So as the year went
along, I contacted,
and I was like, hey. Your house has
got ruined. We really should, you know, put
that money and come to your place to
help rebuild your houses.
And commie's response was no it's more important
to see the Dalai Lama.
Isn't that amazing?
Wow. So anyway,
so we go and my son to and
we go to Darmasala.
And, yeah, the Dalai Lama was in in
in at home.
As far as I knew, no Americans had
gotten to see him. No. Nobody had seen
him.
You know, other people would come and see
him, a lot of Buddhist people and stuff,
but no Americans.
So after a few after a week or
so working with the Tibetan refugees, this is
after we track some, I sent my son
down to Delhi to get to pick up,
to jump on a bus and get my
Sherpa friends to come. So they come,
and I think that afternoon before I was
even back from a little hike in the
hills, they'd gone down the temple, and they're
like, Rick, Rick, Rick, we're gonna see the
Dalai Lama tomorrow. I'm like, how did you
do that? Like, oh, he always went to
the office and asked. Like, easy. You come
with us. I will show you.
So I go the next day, and there's
this line of people
out the door.
But these guys had an invite to go,
so they go in. I go into the
office with them,
and and they're very very reverent. And then
we pass them through the office, and they
go on in, and the office says, oh,
and I said, oh, you know, is it
possible we could meet the Dalai Lama? And
they're like, oh, you're American. You write email.
So
so I went back to the lodge and
wrote an
email explaining I was there with my family,
and we work with the Tibetan refugees,
and my dear Sherpa friends were there, blah
blah blah blah.
And I thought I would never hear anything.
Like, a day or so later, like, 9
o'clock at night, it was a kind of
message. It's like, his holiness would be glad
to meet you.
So yeah we went down and there's all
these calm people calm is an area of
eastern Tibet beautiful
Tibetan people and people make this pilgrimage to
go see the Dalai Lama, and there's maybe
a 100, a 150 of these
beautifully dressed laden. Common people often wear long
pony, black ponytails, and
massive jade jewelry. And they're carrying massive amounts
of jewelry and gifts, and there's 100, 150
people, these guys lined up outside. I mean,
it's it's amazing
the reverence they have. And we know nothing
in America of reverence like that. I mean,
that is so enlightening alone. Well, we do
it with we did that with celebrity, unfortunately.
Yes. A little different.
What they're it's a little different what we
worship there, I think. But, yes. Unfortunately, it's
right. Although I'm a little uncomfortable with humans
worshiping humans, but I get I get the
concept.
It's the idea that they represent, and the
Dalai Lama, for those that don't know,
is a in their belief system,
is a reincarnation
of the Dalai Lama before that and so
on and so forth all the way back.
Yes. Yeah. So for them, it's
not so much worshiping
him as
a blessing for in their life. You know,
in the Buddhist system, you wanna gain as
much merit as you can to move along
through your different cycles of your life. So
it's it's a way for them to gain,
more merit.
So, anyway so, yeah, we get we went
and eventually they call us and hung out
with them for a little bit, had some
pictures taken. And he's like, where are you
from? I'm like, oh, you've been nearby, Harrier.
I said, you spoke in Ithaca. He's there's
a little town, a college town nearby. He's
like, oh, yes. Ithaca. Very small town. So
we had a little chat, and, yeah, it
was really emotional. We were all crying.
It's really emotional.
Does he have that,
supernatural almost presence? I've heard that he does.
I don't I don't know about supernatural,
but I would say,
a very holy presence.
Holy as in like
like peaceful
and still and connected to that piece of
our ourselves, of our I don't know what
the words are, all different spiritualities use different
words for that energy, that vibration.
There's a sense of his
being present to that
and aware of it. Yeah.
And part of it. Yeah. It's really emotional
to look at his eyes.
Really amazing, but the whole experience was amazing.
You know, talking to the Tibetan refugees who've
been electrocuted and tortured and their the families
are tortured
and you know, Kami and his wife you
do a chorus chorus
in in Tibetan Buddhism. A chorus
a circle around some sacred
area. It could be a mountain. It could
be a temple. You know, every day the
again, it helps you gain merit. You know,
every day there'd be 100 you know, of
Tommy and his friends, you know, it's spinning
the prayer wheels and chanting,
you know, to be just amongst all that.
Just to be amongst the people that are
so reverent
and believe and live a life where they
value so much
spiritual parts of ourselves, which is not common
in the US. I read a book about
Bali once, and
it spoke a lot about that. I assume
I kind of like in the Bali people
and the Nepalese people as having that same
they're tapped into such a deeper reverence
than
some people from the rest of the world.
I think a lot of people that live
close to the land
are that way.
I think, the farther we get from the
land, we just tend to lose that. I
think it's I think when you live close
to the land, it's pretty hard to miss
that connection.
Yeah.
You were once
alone in the desert for 40 days?
Yeah. Just,
just before I was in Japan in the
last couple of weeks, I went into south,
Southern Utah to the canyons there
to do a desert solo.
And it was purposely
kinda left,
you know, you could hike, like, the Crest
Trail or something and be alone, but then
you still have a task every day.
So this had I was on I had
my packraft, so there was a 100 mile
river, and I got and I walked out
of a 4 wheel drive to get resupplied
twice.
But on that 100 mile river, I had
this little 8 and a half pound raft.
So I could go a few miles and
there'd be another canyon, and I would hike
that canyon
for an hour or 3 days.
Whatever I felt like. But the idea was
to be,
immersed
alone and really, really
intense
beauty. It's one of my favorite areas and
it was a really,
really,
intense experience. The first
2 weeks were really, really hard.
It was really scary and just to process
things in your life that have been painful
or hurtful or
sad is pretty pretty brutal.
And that was not for the faint of
heart. And then it kinda transitioned, but then
by the end,
who was just this amazing
awareness, you you you only slept under my
tarp 3 nights because of rain.
The 37 nights you're under the stars. I
have pretty minimal stuff. Basically, the clothes I'm
wearing
and a tarp and a sleeping bag tarp
if it rains and my raft, of course,
and a pack and some food. But, so
you have pretty
and some food. But, so you have pretty
minimal stuff, and you're
just exposed the whole time. And
and especially to me in Utah, the sunrise,
sunset, the rocks glow. I rocks glow.
I don't know how they do it because
the light seems to come from within the
rocks,
but that's my experience of it. So there's
this. And in addition, you're like going to
these places where there's one stretch where there
were like
9 giant alcoves in a row, and a
1000 years ago, people lived in each of
those. There was evidence of where they lived.
So there's this whole blend of,
antiquity,
eternalness
of,
experiencing kind
of
being part of nature or
I don't know, I get sound too new
ages, kind of a hard thing to
express, but it was it was an incredibly
stilling experience,
you know, and it developed a real awareness.
You know that there's a stillness inside of
us that we don't normally tap into.
And then, like, that's the real place that's
that's each of us, you know,
that's
who each of us are.
And it's so much different than how we
normally live. It was amazing. Amazing.
Yeah. When you go into something like that,
do you have an idea of the processing
you're going to do or does everything come
up naturally?
Well, I think, you know, for me, my,
I have an awareness. I I didn't wanna
have, like, big expectations
or rigid ones
because,
if you have an expectation, I see this
for people on trips,
then you limit what happens to fit in
within those expectations.
So instead, it was very conscious
to just be present to whatever was
part of
the beauty of what happened. So being that
long alone and and that quiet,
you almost, like, observed what you were experiencing
and feeling whether it's sadness or pain or
loneliness,
fear,
joy, happiness,
calmness.
It almost was like looking at inside yourself
and you could see that.
So whatever kinda came up, it just it
I didn't change it. I didn't really even
think about it too much.
I just
watched it.
And then then I would watch how it
would change, or usually what happened was after
a while, it didn't even weren't even that
in that place again. It it just disappeared.
And it was interesting, you know, initially, I
was, like,
it wasn't gonna have any structure, but I
found that I needed a minimal structure.
It helped me feel a little bit more
grounded.
Like, okay, I'll I'll do a little yoga,
then I'll have breakfast,
and then I'll sit and read or write
for half an hour,
and then I'll walk for a while,
you know, see where I am,
so minimal structure,
but the thing that kept free was just
to pay attention to the experience you're having
inside,
which is amazing.
Yeah.
Do you believe in God? Are you a
religious person or a spiritual person?
I would say spiritual. God's a tough question
because that means that's so loaded for so
many people. For sure. I use that word
sometimes, you know, for myself, for convenience.
For me, it's more like an awareness.
The best I could come out of it
from the desert with was there's more like
at some point came out with an awareness
that there's
like, an all forever,
an eternity, kind of like,
waves or energy
that
if we're still
and allow ourselves that we will
move with that be part of it.
It sounds too mystical, so I'm reluctant to
It doesn't. It it makes total sense. It
doesn't sound mystical.
Yeah. So I have that awareness that there's
some sort of
something. I don't believe in, like, an omnipotent
somebody's up there pulling strings. Nothing like that.
It's more like that there's an energy or
a presence or,
a pattern maybe that when we're with that
pattern,
we're calm,
we're happy, we're more kind, we're more generous,
we can then still experience
pain or sadness or suffering,
but there's a calmness below it that makes
it okay.
Mhmm. So it's more like more like that.
But also,
it's like a pattern that no one would
say destiny or whatever, but there's when you
live, like, in that place or in that
awareness,
things come into your life.
And I don't even wanna use really use
a word that, you know, are supposed to
come into your life. If you live in
a aware then there are things that come
into your life. Like that idea, like, oh,
I should go see the Dalai Lama. Or
like, oh, I should go, you know, whatever.
You know?
It's the flow. You're you get in with
the flow. Yeah. It's more like just a
flow, but you have to kind of be
still enough and notice it
and just say, okay.
Because it normal normally,
we would tend to be scared or shut
down or say that's not possible.
I don't know how many times I've done
things that are impossible,
but it's it never really occurred to me.
I mean, sometimes it didn't work. You know?
That's okay too. You know? Not everything played
out.
But a lot of that stuff was played
out
way beyond anything I ever could have created
or written or expected in my life.
Oh, we limit ourselves far more than the
universe will limit us. It does. Yeah. Yeah.
Which is pretty amazing to have been able
to live in that way.
I'm super fortunate.
That's beautiful.
Did you encounter a single soul on this
journey?
Occasionally, like the 1st 7 days, no footprints,
but there were maybe 3 or 4 access
points where people could come in from the
side into that main canyon, and then I
might see a couple people. Yeah. But I
could go days and not see a footprint.
So occasionally, I'd see people. Mhmm.
Yeah.
It sounds really wonderful,
actually. It was
pretty amazing, Susan.
Yeah. Yeah.
I know you have a story about elephants,
which is one of my favorite creatures.
Tell me the elephant story.
Sometimes we've used elephants
to go look for, like, tigers in the
jungle and things.
And one time we were
using, elephants to cross a river by the
border of India and Nepal
and there was a young baby with a
cleft palate and cleft palate you can't nurse
so the baby would die and, we had
in our group a woman who had a
cleft palate,
so this was many years ago before I
had done so many of those projects that
we mentioned
before, wells and schools and dorms and kids
and orphans and things.
The baby that
the person in our group was very moved
by the situation this young baby was in
and said we should can we do something?
So we used our interpreter
to talk with the mom, and as it
turned out, shorten the story of it, as
it turned out, it's all it took was
a $100
to pay for a bus ticket and hotel
because in Kathmandu,
a doctor Japanese doctor would come once a
month to perform this surgery.
So for a $100 is so the next
year, we're back riding elephants across the river
again with another group, and they had another
baby and they came running out. And first,
they were very excited and they're showing us
the baby that was nursing and living,
and then they were scared because they had
another baby. So again, the second time we
also sent them to Kathmandu for that surgery.
That's amazing. But those things that's kinda what
I say. Like, if you just live with
your eyes open a little, these things come
into your life and then
you kinda
just you just do it because it's there.
You know? You you stop and pause and
talk to these people and pay attention
and you realize this is nothing to take
care of this and help these people.
It's so
it's so easy. Yeah. And
and again, it the world is a tiny
place.
Such a tiny place.
It's very small.
You know, people are the same everywhere.
Mhmm. So
So I have written down here
let me just look. It says,
I was a guide on the highest mountain
in Antarctica with the sultan of Saudi Arabia
and a plane crash with a dog sled
driver
of Admiral Byrd. Those are two stories, I
suppose.
That's all one same story.
It's one story?
Yeah.
Let's hear it.
So
oh, over the years, so many that's one
of the big ones. So another time years
ago, I was again, I had this idea
that
I should have life goals. I was maybe
in my thirties back then. Now that everybody
should have life goals. That's what I've heard.
So I'm like, oh, I should have life
goals. I'm I'm kinda little
little irreverent and a little silly. So I'm
like, oh, I should have life goals. Kinda
like half like, oh, that's a good idea
and half like, this is fun. This is
silly. So I'm like, let's see. I need
to go where they invent chicken wings. I
need to drive a bulldozer, and I should
go to Antarctica.
So I'm like, okay. So I'm like, well,
how do you get to Antarctica? Well, I
had no money doing this job. You you
have base you have almost no money.
That that's a choice you make when you
do this kind of work. So I'm like,
and it's really expensive to go there.
So and I didn't wanna just do a
cruise along the coast that didn't interest me,
and there was only one outfit in the
world. How you can get to the interior
of Antarctica?
And they're set up to do logistics to
climb the highest mountain there called Mount Vincent.
So these people that wanna do the 7th
summit thing, you know, these highest mountains around
the world, they go. And to get there,
what you have to do is you go
to Chile, and then you fly
onto the continent under the ice in the
middle of the continent, Antarctica. That's how you
get there. And you have to go through
these folks, and now they have a jet.
But back when I did it, there was
a c one thirty. I wrote them. I'm
like, hey. I'm Rick French from South Lima.
Like, they would know that is, you know,
Yeah. I'm like an outdoor guide. I'll come
in for free. I'll help, you know, guide
your clients up this mountain. Like, I didn't
really have the experience anyway.
A month before November, I got a phone
call like, hey. Then we got a opening.
Could you come in a month down to
Antarctica
and help be an assistant guide? I'm like,
yeah.
So, yeah, I flew down there and
sitting around.
Any bush flights, whether it's Antarctica or the
Arctic. You never know really when you're gonna
fly, but particularly Antarctica,
especially back then.
So you sit in the airport every day
until they think there's good weather.
In this case, there are a few people
already in place on this base camp. So
every day, we'd go to the airport and
wait.
Well, I'm in the airport.
First, we're sitting around with these guys. There's
some Middle Eastern guys and, I don't know,
playing cards or just chatting,
and they're introducing themselves and they go around.
And one guy's like, oh, I'm the sultan
of Saudi Arabia.
Like, okay. And the other guy's like they
did the other guy didn't speak. He was
Korean. His friends spoke for me. Like, oh,
he's whatever his name is. He's, like, climbed
Everest 5 times and 3 times in the
winter. And they got to me, and I'm
like, oh, I'm Rick from South Lima. You
know?
But, anyway, also in the airport was, Norman
Vaughn.
And Norman in 1928 was going to school
at Harvard,
and he was a dog sled musher. And
Admiral Byrd needed dog sled mushers when he
flew across Antarctica. He's had a step set
up depots.
So they used dog sled mushers to set
those depots.
So in 1928,
Arnold Berg I mean, Norman Vaughn was this
young college kid, does the dog musher for
him. So Arnold Berg named him mountain for
him.
So Norman's well into his eighties now. There's
this amazing guy who's lived in Alaska,
hand me his business cards, like, the oldest
and slowest. He'd done like they did around
13 times.
And what had happened was the year before,
there was only one plane that flew to
Antarctica.
And this pilot of that plane
this year that I went started his own
company to compete
with the old company and he flew I
think was a dc 3,
Bruce was his name. So Bruce was starting
this competing company, and Vaughn, Norman Vaughn, hired
on with him
to fly him to go dog sled
to his mountain and climate.
It was also the last year that you
could dog sled in in Antarctica
because they nixed the dogs because the dogs
bring disease and and and it's not good
for the seals.
So all these pieces are, like, coming together
at this moment in this place.
He needed to raise, like, a, I don't
know, a 1,000,000 or $2,000,000. He's, like, 500,000,
a thou a $1,000,000 short. So National Geographic's
there with them because they were one of
the sponsors. And so you're hanging out, like,
having grilled cheese with all these people, and
Sultan's talking about the racehorse he owns for
the Kentucky Derby.
Anyway, eventually, we fly in the C 130
down there.
Sultan was with us. He was gonna fly
to the South Pole. He wasn't gonna climb
Vincent. I had other clients that were climbing
Vincent. So as we fly down, once we
land, a couple hours later, when it happened,
it was this other plane that Norman wasn't
on it, but his advanced crew was on
it,
and that DC 30 tried to trail the
c 130,
but it was slower.
And by the time he got to Antarctica,
the fog had settled, and he crashed.
So when I was woke
up, there were, plane crash survivors,
in the in the kitchen tent, and they
were still chasing down some dogs and some
survivors.
So there was a lot of drama, of
course, because it's pretty serious situation, obviously. There's
a bunch of survivors from a plane crash.
1 guy was injured pretty bad, Jerry,
and I took turns in the med tent
with him.
Basically, he's on morphine, and he's busted up
in the head and his leg. And my
job was when he had to go to
the bathroom, he'd be kinda grown. I'm like,
oh, you gotta go, Jerry? He's like, yeah.
I'm like, alright. Roll over. Hang on. I
got it. Go ahead. You're in the bottle.
Eventually, the National Geographic paid for a rescue
plane to go get them, which is about
$100,000
back then.
So that took all of them off, and
then we went and climbed
Mount Vincent,
which, you know, these bush planes and little
bush
plane.
It's a twin otter and couldn't get there.
So we sat down, like, 1 in the
morning, sat down and we sat down at
an old Chilean army base that had been
abandoned because they had crashed a plane too.
So they they're bad in this army base.
Everything was buried. So at 1 in the
morning, with nothing else to do, there's a
few bamboo poles sticking up. So we went
around dug by those bamboo poles and pulled
up tents and we pulled up benches and
stoves and food, and we just started cooking
and eating all this food that had been
buried for 10 years. We never really have
anything else to do.
So,
anyway, then we went out and, you know,
climbed the mountain, which was, you know, an
adventurous climb and all that. And,
yeah, we got back. I left the continent,
and then Norman had to downsize his expedition.
It's kind of a cool story. He downsized
because he didn't make much money.
So he downsized to, like, 2 like, 3
guys to help him, and they flew him
to the continent.
Now they flew him with the same agency
I was using, like, very much downsized.
I don't even know if JobShedale Geographic was
still on board within them. They flew him
to the base camp, but he never got
the weather to go climb his mountain.
So what happened was there was some guy
that had a lot of money. So everybody
around the base camp he was very charismatic,
Norman. He's, like, 82 year old. Just a
great guy,
but very charismatic. So after a month of
living in in this base camp on the
ice, this guy with a bunch of money
comes back from the South Pole. Some people
go just a day to go see the
South Pole. Comes back in the camp, and
this guy's like, well, why is everybody so
quiet? What's up today? You know, like, oh,
Norman couldn't get to his mountain. So the
guy pulls out his checkbook and walks over
and gave him, I don't know,
$50,000. Sit here for next year.
So he did end up going the next
year. By then, he didn't couldn't have dogs
anymore
because of this, you know, thing was in
place. And he did. They flew him to
the base, and he did eventually climb that
mountain.
So, yeah, that's that story.
Wow. That's a it's a lot of twists
and turns.
Yeah. Right? Do you stay in contact with
Norman or the sultan or any of the
people
along the way? A a little bit. You
know, peripherally for my Alaska friends, I knew
when Norman died. The guys that were on
the climb,
all of them continued and tried to climb
Everest.
1 of them was there on the climb
the year at Krakow was there. There was
all that drama, and they wrote that book.
So one of my clients, Lou, was at
he's in that book. And so I did
contact him because he was on the mountain,
and he didn't get to the top, but
he had a different take than Krakauer's book.
Well, it's the book's take.
Well, Krakauer, it's that's that's a long story.
I mean, Krakauer, you know, was there trying
to understand why all those deaths occurred.
There was either a lot of deaths on
the mountain.
So Krakauer
was there
just trying to tell the story, but,
anyway, that that's a complicated
question, but it it Claimed a lot of
lives. Yeah. I think,
18 this year. Sherpa Lagos called Chomolunga,
not not Everest. So the locals call Chomolunga.
But, yeah, anyway, so the one guy tried
to go to Everest. He didn't go. The
other guy I heard from you, he was
on the Tibetan side.
He tried to go up there to, like,
pass some dead bodies. He like and he's
like, Rick, why am I here? I didn't
wasn't with him. He wrote me later. He's
like, I just turned around after a few
dead bodies. And the other third guy
was a fireman and contacted me because he
wrote a book. So I was in his
book for a little brief part, and he
had gotten into his drama, run some rescues.
He got stuck at a Ferris wheel. So
I did have conversation
after,
Vincent with the the guys that were clients.
Yes.
Yeah. It's interesting.
Yeah.
You I mean, you've
had now, what,
1,000
different clients around the world. I mean, you've
been doing it for a long time. I
imagine the numbers.
Yeah. I mean, it's gotta be huge. Right?
I mean,
you know, counting starting in 80 if you
count all the delinquent at risk programs, that's,
like, 45 years. I mean, I know I
look like I'm probably 35, but You look
young.
Thank you.
How was your Japan trip? What did you
go to Japan for, and how was the
journey?
That's a really neat, amazing trip. Well, we
go there to do Kumano
Kodo, which is a Shinto Buddhist pilgrimage.
So starting a 1000 years ago,
the people in Japan would make a pilgrimage
to the key peninsula that has a lot
of springs and hot springs and emperors and
abdicated
emperors would take 800 of their finest friends.
As they take their servants, they carry the
emperor.
That for a 1000 years, they've been doing
this pilgrimage through the mountains. So there's
and you that gains you merit and that
those sometime are buried, that's a sutra.
So there's these sutra mounds, these buried mounds
of these sutras on the way. So it's
this combination
of,
ancient spirituality
with these shrines along the way that you
pray at and ring the bell at and
wash your hands at.
Hot springs are soaking, very rural local culture,
little villages, beautiful people.
So it's a really unique way to experience
Japan.
So you because you have the spiritual piece,
you have the historic piece, you have the
beautiful scenery, you have this incredible food that,
you know, that's there. It's,
you know, the all the pretty much every
experience that we do
is more around experience
than collecting
a view of some place.
You know, everything we do, we try to
immerse people,
into some deeper way of experiencing
that place with the people or in some
way. So
it's a very, very interesting country, much different
than ours.
It's incredibly clean, incredibly safe, and the people
are extremely respectful and very kind and gentle.
Really lovely people in Japan. We have a
lot to learn from their gentleness and respect.
Of all the places you've been,
do you have favorites,
or do you love all your children equally?
You know, when people ask me that and
they're on a trip, I always go, the
one that you're on with me right now.
I said, that's my standard answer. Oh,
yeah. I mean, there's Antarctica and there's the
rest of the world so you can't really
compare that. So I tend to like wild
places, extreme places,
so obviously Antarctica. Outside of that, I'm more
of a cooler place, because I so I
like mountains.
So I either like really really wild mountains,
like the arctic,
like way up in the arctic, you know,
bush plane drop off and they'll be around
for 400 miles. Really extreme places like that
or places like the Andes or the Himalayas
where you have a mix of
amazing mountains but you also have really interesting
culture.
So, yeah, the Himalayas, the Andes,
or Greenland,
you know, because Greenland's so extreme too and
remote. Yeah, those kind of places are my
favorites.
Eric the Viking would be happy to hear
that, I'm sure. Exactly. But I like being
home too. I live in a really gorgeous
place. I'm I'm quite content to be home
too. It's really beautiful
where I live right now. Yeah. Have you
ever been on one of these
excursions and thought, oh, this is it. I'm
no more on the planet?
I suppose, but you really don't allow yourself
to go there. That's not really a healthy
way of thinking.
So it's not really an option
in your brain.
Yeah.
You know, I'm you just keep coming up
with more solutions.
Yeah. You don't really go to that place
even if it gets dicey. You don't think
that.
I mean, I suppose in passing maybe, but
if that thought starts to come, you just
don't go there. You just come up with
another possibility,
another way to stretch supplies, another way to
stay warm, another way to get dry, whatever.
You know? Another way to keep people safe.
So not really.
Not too much. Yeah.
You're you're an interesting guy. Can't wait to
read your book.
I'm not writing a book. That's way too
much work. And there's a lot of things
to do besides write a book. Now there's
a lot of things to experience yet and,
you know, a lot of other just not
my skill set.
I get it. I get it. Tell people
how they might find you and maybe go
on an adventure with you. Well, that's pretty
easy. You could just type in the company
name, pack paddle ski. But packpalski.com.
Just type in packpalski.com
will come up. You can do it on
Facebook. You can do it. You can type
in Rick French on Facebook. You can type
in Pac Palski on Facebook. You can take
Pac Palski. The website comes up. That's pretty
easy to find me. Yeah. I mean, people
in Kinesis where I live don't know me,
but, you know, other people know me. I
don't know if people in Kinesis know where
to find me, but that's where I live.
Yeah. Rick, thank you so much for your
time.
It was great to meet you. It'd be
more fun to do an adventure with you,
though.
Yeah. I mean, I who knows what it
might be?
Exactly. It was a delight. I I read
you, you know, I I looked at your
information, how you got into that. It's really
I love that you've that you've attempted to
do this.
Meaning more people who've tried to follow their
dreams like that because it's hard.
So I I really admire that you took
this on and, you know, what you're what
you're trying to do anymore of that.
Thank you. It's just great. When you do
this, you tend to connect with other people
who do and view the world in the
same way.
You're part of my bubble now.
Yay.
I love it. Well, one of my best
friends, she's a adventurer. She's been to so
many places, and
I'm sure she's gonna be excited to hear
this episode. I don't know that she wants
to climb on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
I'm pretty sure that's a no. But but
some of this other stuff maybe, you know?
Yeah. We do other things that aren't quite
as rigorous as that. Like, Japan's not too
rigorous. Yeah. That one really that piqued my
interest. That's right up my alley.
You know, a bunch of things we do
aren't aren't that rigorous.
Yeah. They're
ski in Norway. Yeah. That kind of stuff.
Well, Rick, it's such a pleasure. Please stay
in touch. You're very cool. You have a
really nice day. Okay? You too. Alright. Take
care. Thanks for listening, everybody.
Bye. Bye bye.
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