Two men, one world famous mountain, and a tough question

For Brent Snow, success in business and in life is a matter of perspective. If you're too close to the ground, you can't see the big picture. But if you're too far up, not only will you not see the details, chances are you're freezing and you can't even breathe.

As founder and creative director of Ten Thousand Feet, LLC, a company that has created learning experiences for organizations worldwide for the past 30 years, Brent has embraced and taught the importance of perspective most of his life. "Perspective changes everything" is as much a part of his psyche as it is his company's brand.

Apple, Microsoft, and other large organizations have used his simulations to help their leaders develop business acumen (Interplay), learn decision-making strategies (Decision Mojo), and more recently build greater diversity and inclusion into their cultures (The Inclusive Leader).

But never has the matter of perspective struck so close to home for Brent as it did late last year, when a lifelong dream with a longtime friend literally almost took his breath away. At the end of November 2018, Brent and Jamie Robertson – friends since they were 19 – decided to tackle their bucket list and set off for the Himalayas on a trek to Mount Everest Base Camp.

After a 2-week adventure involving narrow trails, yaks, colorful flags, a Sherpa guide, tea at 13,000 feet, and somehow enough iPhone battery power and wireless bandwidth to post some breathtaking photos, they eventually reached the summit of an adjacent peak, Kala Patthar. Meaning "black rock," Kala Patthar has an elevation of 18,519 feet and is famous for its summit views of Mount Everest. It's also about 1,000 feet higher than Everest Base Camp. (The Washington Post, Scaling Everest)

Making the difficult climb to the top of Kala Patthar afforded them a spectacular view, but a respiratory infection that had taken hold of Brent a few days earlier made it nearly impossible for him to breathe, much less continue the climb. It was then, with the world's highest peak over their shoulders, that the pair faced a difficult question: How much is enough?

"Climbing Kala Patthar was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, in part because the air is damn thin above 18.000 feet, and because my cold has moved into my chest and I’m all congested (sorry for the gory detail), which I think has reduced my ability to breath deeply and process oxygen. About half way up as I was going about 1 tenth of a mile an hour, I told myself this was the universe’s way of upping the ante on the challenge for me. ... Jamie may or may not go for it.... that will be a game-time decision in the morning."

The next day they indeed decided they had accomplished enough and it was time to turn back:

We decided this morning to start heading down rather than stay another day at that altitude. When we did our morning check in, both Jamie and I reported barely sleeping during the night (one of things that goes at altitude is sleep), and even our sherpa/guide didn’t get a ton of sleep. I still felt like I had been run over by a cement mixer and knew I didn’t have another uphill day in me. And Jamie reported that we had just accomplished his main bucket list goal, which was to see Everest up close in his lifetime.

The decision to call off their climb to base camp wasn't easy, but it was strategic. After years of helping leaders understand how to make optimal decisions, Brent later said he was keenly aware of the potential decision traps, especially the loss aversion/sunk cost trap, that could cloud his judgment or worse, put his or Jamie's life at risk. Sadly, several deaths were reported this spring along crowded trails in what has been one of the deadliest climbing seasons on record for Mount Everest, and Brent is sure that particular decision trap likely kept some climbers continuing on when they should have turned back.

"It would have been nice to have the bragging rights of setting foot in Everest Base Camp, but at this time of year nothing is going on there (too late in the year for any expeditions), and you can’t see Everest from EBC anyhow," he posted to his friends. "I’ve wondered what the last few days would have been like if my system wasn’t so compromised, but it is what it is. It has been a great experience and I’ve learned a lot."

From there, they began a difficult trek down spanning several days, Brent out of breath and the journey more cloudy, windy, and cold than it had been on the way up. "After descending, ascending, descending, ascending, descending (thankfully more descending than ascending!)," as he put it, they reached a tiny village only to discover they'd have to to climb yet another several thousand feet to reach the nearest clinic.

A doctor there diagnosed bronchitis and "the dreaded Kumbu Cough," named for the area because it affects many mountaineers and trekkers there, then provided Brent with a round of antibiotics and some cough syrup. After several more days of trails and "hang onto your stomach" suspension bridges, they took off over a precipice in a small plane at Tenzing–Hillary Airport (called the most dangerous airport in the world) bound for Kathmandu, the first and final stop in Nepal for most climbers. From there they would soon be heading home.

"We jumped in a cab and headed off to our cool little Kathmandu Hotel (hot showers, anyone!) the Dalai-la, only to quickly realize we had just left a tranquil, albeit rugged and sometimes intense paradise, for the noisy chaotic frenzy of our modern world," he wrote.