Jim Williams is an explorer, ski instructor, Exum Guide, business owner, and a record-setting climber. Jim is the founder of Exploradus, a travel exploration company, delivering rich experiences in extraordinary destinations.  

In this episode, Jim shares what it was like growing up in California in the 60s. He talks about how his love of climbing led him to start teaching and guiding by the age of 13. Stephan and Jim discuss how his mother made a big impact on the trajectory of his life. Jim then dives into some of his incredible adventures, including skiing 900 miles in 50 days to the South Pole, guiding climbers up the Seven Summits of the world in less than one year, and successfully following Ernest Shackelton’s 1915 route through the Antarctic’s South Georgia Islands. Stephan and Jim also talk about his efforts to help clean up all the waste left behind on Mount Everest.

Find out more about Exploradus and Jim at Exploradus.com

This week’s episode is sponsored in part by Teton County Solid Waste and Recycling, announcing the new commercial Curb to Compost Program for restaurants and other commercial food waste generators. More at TetonCountyWY.gov or at @RoadToZeroWaste.JH on Instagram

Support also comes from The Jackson Hole Wine Club. Curating quality wine selections delivered to you each month. Enjoy delicious wines at amazing prices. More at JacksonHoleWineClub.com

Want to be a guest on The Jackson Hole Connection? Email us at connect@thejacksonholeconnection.com. Marketing and editing support by Michael Moeri (michaelmoeri.com,@thatsamoeri).

You are tuned into the Jackson Hole Connection, sharing, fascinating stories of people connected to Jackson Hole.

I am truly grateful for each of you for tuning in today.

Support for this podcast comes from:

Folks, I enjoy reading and learning from others, which guides me to share a quote , because for me, reading helps me learn, helps me be exposed to new ideas that I can apply to my life in my personal life, but also my business life as well.

So today's quote is, It's easy to say.

It's not my child, not my community, not my problem.

Then there are those who see the need and respond.

I consider those people, my heroes and folks that's from Fred Rogers.

That's right.

Mr.

Rogers, the person we grew to love and saw for many years.

Today is episode 191.

You will hear for Jim Williams.

Jim is going to share his story of exploring the world.

Jim started at an early age with a curious mind, which led him to explore the area where he lived.

And as Jim learned more about his area, Expanded his area of exploration and that passion of exploration and adventure grew.

Once Jim realized with the help of his mother, we all, we all receive so much help and good thoughts from our moms.

Jim realized what his profession should be.

And you know what folks at that moment, that's when Jim and his life really took a turn in the right direction.

And it took off to guide others to explore the world.

everybody listening, can Google Jim to discover what he has accomplished in the world of guiding and exploring.

But what's great about today is to sit down with Jim and you can hear his story.

Jim shares with you, the timeline of his life, of what he accomplished and how he gained experience to become a superb Explorer and world-known guide

Thank you for joining me this morning at the Jackson Hole Connection.

Ah, you're welcome.

Pleasure to be here.

Well, as you being an Explorer, we have lots to cover today about your life and the adventures that you have been on.

but we all start someplace.

I'm curious to learn where you were born and raised.

And how did you land here in Jackson?

Well, I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, but.

To be honest, have no recollection of living there.

Obviously I lived there for at least two years because my sister was also born there.

And then I'm told we moved to Shreveport Lu, from Shreveport to Schenectady New York, or my father worked for General Electric, have no memory of that either.

And then we moved to California, the south bay area, Saratoga, California.

And we lived there for, several years.

Then we lived in two places, finally owned a house.

And then in the early sixties, we moved back to the east coast because my father worked internationally and we lived on the west coast when he was working in Japan.

And we work on, lived on the east coast when he was working in India.

So then we moved back.

To the east coast and we spent three or four years there.

Then we moved back to California where I basically spent the rest of the time until I graduated from high school.

Okay.

Now at that time, when a year or so after that, and so I grew up, or I spent my formative childhood years in California, the south bay area, Saratoga, California, and, went to Saratoga High School, did those kinds of things.

and while when I was a , kid, I, got involved.

And a program that was, science-based sort of one of the early programs that would be akin to Teton science school, but much more, open format than, the science school and the modern experiential learning.

It was experiencial learning.

It was science-based programs all over California and actually all over the west.

And, we did, and in the summers we did, things we called Scamps, which were science camps.

And they were 10 days to two week long, backpacking trips and the mountains.

And we probably on the Sierras and coast range.

And we probably, you know, we.

Those in need.

It was kid, it was age appropriate.

So you didn't have little kids and big kids.

But, that introduced me to being outdoors.

Being in the mountains, my family was outdoors.

My mother didn't believe that it needed to have a television.

She didn't believe in television.

In fact, it wasn't until I was in high school, that we actually got a television in our house.

If she heard of a program that needed to be watched, it was on TV or school said needed to be watched.

We go over to somebody's house who had a television, but then my great grandmother, great.

Somebody died and left us a television, which she begrudgingly transferred to the house.

But promptly put it between behind locking key.

So you couldn't watch.

Just randomly cause she believed California being nice.

She believed that you needed to be outdoors.

If you had spare time, if you were doing SchoolWorks one thing, but if you were, if you could be outdoors, so spent a lot of time growing up, climbing trees and running around.

I didn't play a lot of sports per se.

I tried my hand at baseball and I tried my hand at soccer.

I tried my hand basketball.

I was tall, so they used to put me in as a center.

And then as soon as I did the jump, then they would take me out again.

But, that was about it.

but I enjoyed doing things outside.

I enjoyed, you know, climbing trees.

I enjoyed sledding in the east coast.

I enjoyed riding my bike and early, early mountain biking.

Cause they don't, I didn't make mountain bikes at that time.

I just took regular old street bikes and rode them in the woods.

But anyway, and then when I was about.

10 11 years old, I got introduced to climbing.

And, I'll say that if there was, you know, something, even though it at the time, it didn't seem that way a pivotal moment.

It was probably that introduction to climbing rock climbing and some older kids there on the year told her I was, but there were 12, 13 years old.

Right.

They, had started rock climbing.

One of the guys was a little bit older and, uh, and I went up.

They were rappelling off this face, which turns out is only about 60 feet high, but it seemed like it was thousands of feet in the air.

And I went up there, I crawled up there and came down where they were.

And I said, I want to do that.

They're like, yeah.

Okay.

Then I got off the edge and I was in tears and it was the most frightening thing I did, but I did it.

And then the guy who was the leader and the inspiration for this whole outside program, we were on a backpacking trip in the Los Padres national forest.

He said, well, you know, repelling is fine, but you need to learn to rock climb.

You need to actually learn to belay and climb and tie knots and do all that stuff.

So they put together a rock climbing class the next day.

And the woman that was with me, who was helping him teach the class who had been there when I had been, uh, repelling, She, uh, was there and she was blaming me and I climbed up this little climb and, you know, those days there was a field thing.

So it was, you know, on belay on ready to climb on ready, climb, climbing, climb away, you know, a long dialogue that you had to go through to start climbing.

So I climbed up the thing and then I got up to the top of it and all of a sudden, my red wing boots and, high top lace up boots.

And I got to the top, they said, so what do you say now?

And I said, I didn't know, the then i said.

Thank you.

And they said, well, thank you, works, but off belay.

anyway, so that was the start of it.

And that was the start of climbing for me.

And then the other guys that were with me were closer to my age and I started reaching out, to, learn about climbing.

And my folks were, they probably weren't overly excited about me climbing, but they were, willing to let me, to let me, take lessons.

So I took climbing lessons and I went on a variety different projects.

And I researched it and I had to have climbing gear.

So I joined the co-op REI now in Jackson, but I have a three or four digit membership number, no way.

Everybody's well, what's this, I'm like, that's my original membership card number.

Doesn't work anymore.

I go, well, that's the only number I got.

So anyway, what were you a founding member?

I was just a kid, but anyway, I started doing as much climbing as I could and it, and I would.

And so this would have been, you know, through junior high and junior high pushing towards high school.

And, you know, we did cross country skiing.

We did what effectively now is Alpine touring, but we did it in those days.

Cause we, our skis had cable bindings on.

All right.

So you just put a bear trap on the front and you loosened the cable and you walked in those things.

And you know, we walked out from Badger pass to glacier point, helped push off the, Firefall and that still existed in the winter.

You know, it's a 12 mile walk, but when you're 12 miles and you know, in those days that was a pretty major effort.

Walked out, came back.

Did those kinds of trips used to do got more into cross country skiing as time went back, went on, classic skiing and climbing into the back country.

And telemarking even though it was on wooden skis anyway.

And, but then the guy that ran that program, I was working as a junior guide probably, but, I was 12, and by the time I was 13, he hired me to teach rock climbing to high school kids 15 years.

And up for 14 years and up whatever.

And, I came to him and I said, his name is Larry.

I said, Larry, you know, you, hired me, 13 years or I'm going to be 13 years old.

And I, you're hiring me to teach these, you know, 14 year olds and up or 50 pounds and they're older than I am.

And he goes, well, so who's going to tell him, I said, are you?

And I said, no, I'm not going to tell him.

And then he said, well, neither am I.

So we just went from there and I started teaching that.

And then I went.

Oh, to Oregon did learn to ice climb.

Did a mountain medicine seminar.

Here's a 14, 15 year old kid in a course that's designed for doctors and medical people, but.

I was doing my BA I mean, my biology, I knew what the body and I knew I'd studied about what there was to study about that and, avalanche, ice climbing, that kind of thing.

And so I continued to teach, and the high school and on the outdoor program, I eventually got to teaching.

for the university of California, Santa Cruz, and we continued to do backpacking cross-country skiing, and I'd started teaching mountaineering on our backpacking trips and then went to work for university of California, Santa Cruz, as a guest lecture in the summer on an extension program that was basically a month of backpacking in the Sierras with some good mountaineering up high.

No, that was kind of my, that was my start of that type of thing.

And those days you could hitchhike anywhere.

So I mean, I even hitchhiked from junior high on, I didn't like to ride the bus, so I would run across the highway and go to the street that led down to the school and just hitchhiked to the school, which is maybe two miles away.

But anyway, I'd hitchhike almost every day.

I hitchhiked to high school until I got a car that was.

father was smart enough not to get me a car that could drive to any of the climbing sites.

He got me a 1929 Model A Roadster pickup.

Then it didn't go.

But about 35, 40 miles an hour and top speed and had a soft top.

So you got wet if it was raining and, and, it was great on dates.

I'll tell ya.

but, anyway, I would drive out to high school and then I sorta stopped hitchhiking quite as much, but I'd still drive it back to down.

Then hitch up to hitchhike up to the rock climbing areas, go bouldering almost every day after school.

and then I migrated to Yosemite.

Where I spent time, working with you so many mountaineering school teaching or our climbing kids programs?

mostly cause I was still a high school kid.

And then, Hey

Jim, when you started teaching at Yosemite mountaineering and you were in high school, what year was that roundabout?

Oh,

I graduated from my school in 72.

So you can just before that, you know, 70, 71, somewhere in there, probably 71.

So you're making quite a name for yourself in high school.

These organizations letting you teach,

teach for them.

Well, you got to recognize that I was, nearly six feet tall by the time.

When I started teaching rock climbing at 13, I already had a little goatee.

And by the time I was 15, I had a full beard.

So I mean, people didn't know how old I was.

It wasn't an issue of that was, you know, could you rock lemon in those days?

That was prior to present style of rock climbing.

So we were still hammering pecans and hanging on for dear life.

And, and then I guess it was probably right about there.

So 14, would have been about 15 years old because I didn't have a driver's license, but I had a permit was I drove up with my folks.

My folks sent me to, or allowed me to go to a climbing school that was run by then an extremely famous rock climber guy by the name of Royal Robbins.

And it was a contemporary of Chouinards, Yvon Chouinard's who owns Patagonia and Roy.

And he'll more kind of, I would say there were somewhat rivals, but anyway, Royal put together and wrote a book called rock craft and advanced rock craft.

And he put together a 10 day climbing school, which was a rock climbing program for a full 10 days, and he hired, pretty much the top is rock climbers at the time.

And I, you know, it's, it made a huge impression on me, of those people.

it was Royal and then there was a guy named Dick or who kind of dropped out of sight for awhile and there was Kim Schmitz and then there was Jim Bridwell and then there was Mike Covington and then there was, Dick door worth, I believe

that was it.

Anyway, those were the instructors.

So it was almost one-on-one instructors for guidance.

Yeah.

And this is hippie days, you know?

we were hanging out at a rock climbing area outside of lake Tahoe and going climbing.

Yeah, it was sort of hanging out, sleeping and sleeping bags on the ground and that kind of thing.

And from there, I got invited by Birdwell to go to Yosemite and I hung out with him for a couple of weeks there and hanging out and, you know, 70 and my I'd spent literally all the money spending money.

My folks had given me on climbing gear and I hitchhiked over the SMT and it was hanging out there, eaten, rolled, oats, brewers, Euston, honey, and, rolled oats out of a bag that you'd feed horses.

But anyway, My folks are like, well, why don't you come home?

And I'm like, eh, I don't, I'll have to hitchhike home.

Oh my mother, fine.

He's oh, I'll send up some money so you can get a bus ticket.

And I'm like, okay.

So I got a bus ticket to Modesto where Royal had a climbing shop and they took the balance, went in and bought more climbing gear.

And then that was only an hour, two hours from my house.

So then I hitchhiked home.

And as I got out at the corner, my mother was sitting there and I figured you'd do that.

Anyway.

She didn't stop me years and years later, she said, you're, you know, don't expect that.

Your brothers or sisters to be like you, they are.

but she, let me go through that.

And then I was climbing that's summer after high school, and I got accepted to college up in billings, Montana called Rocky mountain college.

And the name said, Rocky mountain college.

And the brochure showed the bear tooth mountains.

I thought, oh, this will be cool.

I'd been out to the Tetons a couple of times backpacking and I tell my funny, Teton story.

I was probably, I don't know, 15, 16 years old probably.

And we were.

We didn't need no stinking guide.

we could go climb on our own.

We knew how to climb.

uh, another guy and I got our act together and got our bag and walked up the trail towards the grand Teton and got up to some lakes and kept climbing towards the grand Teton and got to the top Dissapointment peak and went, oh, we can't get there from here.

And so the next year we came back and we hired Exum and at that time, Willie and sold them on the others was of Everest fame was working at XOM.

So Willy took us up on me, Chuck prep, who I knew from Yosemite and Willie were all working.

And so I, we were by then, we were enamored by the names and the people.

So then we climbed the grant.

and then.

W quite a few years later, I came back to work at Exum and I worked with Kim and I was a lead guide for Mike Covington and Alaska.

So.

All that I had as a kid kind of came back around and I was able to join in that group of people that I felt were really special and always kept as mentors.

So kind of sidetracked, but I went to billings.

I got there thought, oh my God, there are no mountains here.

There was 60 miles away.

anyway, found a climbing or a company, a guiding company, a little store.

And I joined those guys and, we started a retail business and, I went to school in geology and I continued to guide through the, in the bear tooths and climb in the bear tos, teach climbing, teach skiing, cross country skiing, downhill skiing at red lodge.

And.

Continued, till I graduated in 77 climbing in Canada, all over the us and, the world in general.

And then, shortly after I worked for a while as a geologist and the bear Toose and, Stillwater.

And then I, went from there to graduate school at errors in Arizona, studied primer for us.

My interest was China.

I studied permafrost on Tibetan blotto, and, then that was over in about 81.

I became, co-leader.

Expedition to climb an unclimbed peak in China.

And that was pretty significant.

And it was at the time or well-funded expedition that lasted two months, local, filmmaker from Jackson, Peter Paul Alphaeon was a long to do a film of it, but that film never happened.

but anyway, we climbed a, a peak and, so Sichuan, China had never been climbed before and it was a pretty well, it was, the climb.

We did another fellow and I Alpine style 2000 meter face.

That was probably 70 degrees, ice face, basically.

So we did.

It was a really epic climb.

We thought we would take six days.

It took us 10 days and we had an avalanche on the second to last day that took away our stove and our food backpack and sleeping bag.

We had a tent and the one sleeping bag between two of us and some gear.

And this is an unclimbed peak.

Remember that?

So we then for our, an unclimbed face on the peak, some of the other guys on the expedition, we didn't know this had actually reached the summit before us, but anyway, we never went to the actual summit because of this avalanche.

And so we descended onto the east side, which still, again, an unclimbed peak never even been explored that we knew of.

And we climbed back around underneath the north face and back to.

Base camp.

And that was a pretty much a 36 hour push, that we did know we had a couple of granola bars because the sponsor was Quaker and they were coming out with the chewy granola bar at that point.

And so we were supposed to do ads for them on the chewy granola bar.

And I can still remember I was, they were filming Peter was filming.

Was it going to be an ad for chewy granola?

At least they thought it was, they didn't really understand climbers very well.

But anyway, so the first thing they said to me was, Hey, you know, I'm like, well, what do you want me to say?

And they're like, say whatever comes to mind.

And I said, okay.

And I said, it's so I took a bite of it and I said, Hm.

They're like stop.

no, not bad done work.

So they handed me the storyboard and it read, and I can still remember it's a moist and chewy unexpectedly delicious Quaker chewy granola bar.

So we said those lines all over the place tried to make a little videos of those.

Oh, it was useless.

But anyway, but we had some to eat, so we ate them and we climbed for 36 hours.

We had the two ropes and a few pieces of gear and that was it.

We made it back to camp to basically.

And when we arrived, they were beginning to have a Memorial service because they hadn't seen us for three days.

Oh no.

And they were having a Memorial service for the, for two missing climbers.

Nobody knew where they were that we walked in.

They were like, wow, you're here.

Then they, anyway, then we left the next morning and went back across China.

So that wasn't my first climbing expedition in China.

And then.

Just to shorten up the story a little bit, but then, I was at home after this expedition and after I'd finished, I was the co-leader with, Fred Becky and, infamous American climber.

And, and then a number of people from Bozeman.

Rob Hart, who started crazy Creek chairs and, pat callous, who was a very, prolific, climber and Bozeman, and, Dougal McCarty, and a number of other guys.

I came back and I finished all the sponsor obligations of photos and all that.

And then I was looking for a job.

I was a geologist, you know, I needed to have a job.

So I'm sitting there at the dining room table, filling out job applications.

And my mother came in and she goes, and she was a pretty savvy person.

And she said, what are you doing?

And I said, I'm filling out job applications and try to get a job as a geologist.

And she said, doesn't look like you're having much luck.

I said, well, no, I'm not.

And she goes, so what do you like to do?

Oh, well, you know, I like to go climbing.

I like to go skiing and I liked to teach and liked to guide and I liked to travel and she goes, so why aren't you doing.

I'm like, well, because I thought I was supposed to be a geologist.

That's what you go to school for.

I has sent me to school.

You guys spent all this money, sent me to college and the graduate school and all this.

And I thought that's where, what I needed to do.

And she said, well, why don't you go do what you like to do colleges, just to teach you how to do that.

I said, okay.

And so then I went out and within a year or so I had work in particular for company.

It was in called mountain travel.

I had almost 300 days a year of work between here and the Tetons, And or here in Jackson, including, you know, the skier and, Exum Mountain Guides, I had about 300 days a year of work and, mountain travel.

And those three kept me really busy.

And so Jackson was a nice place because summertime, oh, the global travel in the summer, Europe pretty much have its own guides.

And so to guide in the places where I had expertise, which was, Asia and some south America was, Seasonally was spring and autumn.

So I would go back and forth and then I'd come back here and I'd go to Denali.

And then after Denali, I'd come down there to the Tetons, guide for a full summer in the Tetons, and then leave again in September and go to Asia or wherever, and then go from there, come back here and work at the village, for, For Pepe at the time, as a guy, as a ski guy, what's now are called back country guide.

But that time we didn't have that much back country and access.

So we couldn't, we didn't couldn't go out almost every day.

It wasn't open gates and you had to sign out and the patrol had to let you sign out.

Anyway, I worked for them and I worked for peppy, to be from about 83 to 97.

and then I, Quit working with them for a short time and moved and went to working in south America for and then guiding back country skiing, and the Tetons in the mid nineties through to early 2000s.

And then I went back to work as an instructor for the village in, about 2004 where I still teach.

That's a remarkable history there, Jim.

there's other points in there that I haven't been filled up.

Oh, I'm

sure.

And we're going to get to a few specific stories that are, I want you to share.

but I love what your mom said to you.

Go out and do what you enjoy college was to teach you how to find that, and how to be responsible, but.

go enjoy what you want to

buy a large number of people who would say I was fairly irresponsible, but anyway, I, I survived my irresponsible days and managed to get on from there.

So Jim, we're going to take a quick break to get a word from one of our sponsors and then we will be right back.

Jim, welcome back.

I'm so enjoying your story.

And what I gather is you started coming out here as a teenager to climb with friends and, you know, just over time through you following your passion of being a guide, a teacher in the mountains, skiing climbing, you naturally set some roots to, to end up living here in Jackson.

Over the years, certainly introduced me to a place that ended up being home.

For sure.

I thought about.

you know, moving back up to Billings Montana, but the growth potential, they ex the sort of, oh, what, let us seem like an, you know, intellectual expanse and luggage was here more so than up there.

And people here had a little bit more global view of things that time we had like winter and summer, and then the off seasons were real and I was gone and we had an airport, right.

So I could get in and out of here quite easily.

So that was you know, a, it made for perfect in and out.

and then L then living here in the, in between.

that's kinda, I ended up here, but I ended up here was actually, a conscious choice because it's like, okay, where do I live I would go up to Montana and work cattle ranches for a few years just to get some money.

And then I'd come back here.

And I had, began to have roots here between climbing and skiing.

And then from there, you know, just developed a greater, roots, on the picture.

And so then I actually, in the beginning had a, business, called professional mountain guides.

And cultural expeditions and ran those.

And by then I had mountain travel had sold.

It was becoming what's now empty.

So back it was in a it's changing.

And that, for me, I was the China operations manager for mountain travel, in China from about 83 to just around 90 91, then I was done that sold and lots of things changed.

So I moved on and I did my own businesses.

two of them one was professional mountain guides, which was climbing.

And then, Cultural expeditions, which were trips that had a little stronger cultural, bent to them.

but their small group exploratory things with an educational component, even the climbing, has that.

Then I was fortunate in, oh, well, 1987 or so I was working for mountain travel and I'm the head of mountain travel friend of mine named Leo Labon, said, Hey, you know, we're starting to put together climbing in the Antarctic.

we, you know, would you be interested in going and working with, Those guys in the Antarctic and climbing Mount Vinson.

And those days we flew across the Drake passage refueling.

So we could take four people plus the pilot and then your gear.

And then it was the rest was filled with fuel that you hand pumped into the wings, as you flew across the take the Drake passage.

And, that, that aircraft will hold 12 to 16 people at this point without all that stuff in there.

But anyway, working for them at the time was the guy who lives here.

Also Lanny Johnson was a PA here in town for years and Lanny and I worked and I ran the China stuff and Lanny did some guiding.

He was a Canadian certified guide and.

after the Antarctic season or so Leo came to me and said, look, we're trying to put together a crossing of the Antarctic continent from the base of the peninsula.

And originally it was a very grand scheme, which was to take a boat across the Drake passage, get off on the sea ice do a Shackleton ask type thing, go get off on the sea ice cross the sea ice have a resupply point on the coastline and then ski the last winter or 900 miles.

So south pole, but as the reality developed, and, and all we B we realized that was really a huge, that might even require wintering over.

Nobody was very keen on dark and really cold weather.

And we opted.

And we were able to help develop the, first blue ice runways that allowed wheeled aircraft to land on the continent without a dirt strip, but an ice strip.

and that has been a huge success.

In fact, even today, I mean, they S they fly a 7 57 down there, and with passengers on it landed on the ice.

They fly the Ellucian, big overwhelming for.

supplied yet down there landed on the ice.

You can have very long ice runways that are well-maintained and, on the planes land.

Now you don't touch the brakes.

You know, you land at 250 miles an hour and you've got.

He got a land differently, but the pilots that know that, no, hell how that works.

Anyway, we put that together.

We landed the Austral summer, before we started then in 88, we had been able to get a group together to go to the south pole.

Now we had hoped to have a lot more people, but we ended up with her crew.

And the most significant thing to me was that at the time we left for the cell pole, there had only been 11 people reach the south pole on foot, all from the New Zealand side, along the same route, the route that, Scott and Edmonson and the footsteps of Scott.

Followed and of those 11 people 600, alright.

Yeah.

Six had returned alive and the other five and all perished Scott's expedition perished, on the ice.

you know, the odds were not in our favor, if you will.

the, we took 11 people to the south pole.

We had a lot more, And support then Scott or any of those guys have for that matter.

But we, had orchestrated, we had, an aircraft on the ice and we had a base camp that was maintained, by the pilot and a doctor.

And we had, at times we had two aircraft on the ice and they were, they'd really up the climbing of Vincent C for the highest point in the Antarctic climb in that anyway.

So we flew all of our people and it was an international expedition that had Americans.

It had the first women, it had a fellow from India, a guy from Chile, people from the UK, people from Canada.

And of course the Americans and the oldest American.

Anyway, when you're the first person, there's a lot of things.

It can be first, but anyway, So then we flew out, we flew onto the ice.

We flew out to the coast and then we started skiing and we skied, as a shakedown from the coast back to the base.

And then we skied on from the base to the pole.

And the total was about 1500 kilometers, which is approximately 900 miles, which is about the same as skiing from here to San Francisco.

Just to give you an idea.

and, it took us, actually 50 days of skiing and 45 days of actual skiing, 50 days of the trip.

And we found that after 10 days travel, we began to lose our steam.

So we needed a rest day and we were able to.

Get those rest days.

And on some of them, we got a resupply of our, food and fuel and everything.

So our trip was supported, but it's important to note first it was the first crossing.

And, second is, it was prior to the existence of a GPS or satellite phones.

So we were navigating via the sun.

Cause that was the only star we could see.

And then, we were staying in communication on a radio.

And and the ultra low frequency radio bounces off the stratosphere and who knows where it lands.

But anyway, So we continue to the south pole.

We got everybody to the south pole on the trip.

And, so then that was a big deal.

We had to make sure nobody could claim going first.

So we got to the south pole marker and made everybody put their right hand one on top of the other.

And then person that was, on the bottom was last and person was on top, got to put their hand on next and they would put both hands on.

So everybody got there at the same time, but, uh, we had the first person from India.

We had the first two women to ever reach the south pole on foot and they were both Americans.

We had, Yeah.

Yeah.

Tori Myrddin, who's now the president of a college and, don't remember the name of it.

But anyway, Tori Merton and, Shirley met and, Shirley and her husband had been the financing behind Hobey sport, OB care.

Okay.

Well that in the early days and they'd sold Hoby and, and then Colonel Bajaj was the Indian guy.

And then, then we had a guy from Minneapolis, Joe Murphy, who had been president of the American Alpine club at one time.

I believe.

And, we had.

Two or three others.

Then we had a guy from Chile and then we had, one of the navigators was, from the UK and the other was from Canada.

They were also snowmobile drivers at times.

We had, a guy from Chile and then we had a pilot and a doctor who stayed at base camp the entire time, but they were part of the team without them.

We would have been in a world of hurt.

Um, and and we had two physical resupplies and one cash along the way in order to have enough fuel and enough food.

And also to get rid of our waste because we carried with us, all of our human waste, be it gray water or virtually anything.

and and it all froze, so it didn't stink.

And anyway, so we reached the south pole.

We flew back from the south pole, stopping midway to refuel and got stuck there for a week and then flew back to the base.

And then the aircraft came in and picked us up and flew us back to that, main land.

And then we were, metal.

We were.

Done.

That was the end of January.

So we started Thanksgiving into January a couple of years after that, I guided a crossing of the aunt of the Patagonia ice cap..

And then in the beginning of about, well, in 2000, we had a huge cleanup expedition to Mount Everest.

I had started guiding Mount Everest in about , 1994.

So in 99, we'd done a medical research project there in 2000.

I was a climbing leader for an expedition that was supposed to be doing a huge cleanup.

And we did do huge cleanup.

We cleaned up a ton.

Of waste.

And, I can't remember how many, but I'm on the 700 or so plus oxygen bottles off the mountain and we carried trash down we made trash into a commodity so that people got paid to carry it down the mountain by weight.

Anyway.

So we did that.

We summited that Everest 27th of May and then came back, eventually got back to the U S flew straight to Alaska, climbed with a, private client to the summit of Denali, couple of weeks and then came back down and then, came back to Exum spent a summer in Exum yeah.

Guiding and right near the end, I had a couple came and they were like, Hey, you know, we'd like to go climb Kilimanjaro.

So I was like, oh, okay.

You want to go in September?

I said, sure.

So I said, okay, let's go.

So we, another friend, woman who had been climbing, Everest with me and had finally succeeded, she joined us.

And then, so we climbed Kilimanjaro.

And then on our way home, we met, another woman from here in Jackson, Kay Wilson.

And we flew over to Russia and went down to Alvarez.

Climbed Alvarez came back to the U S after that.

And then, then I went and guided a Trek to the base of Kanchenjunga, On the Nepal Indian border Kanchenjunga is a third highest mountain in the world.

And then we went from, we didn't climb it, but we went to the base camp, came back and then I flew from there over to Australia.

And the us Olympic team was, well, the Olympics had just ended.

This is in 2000 and the Paralympics are my cousin and her husband were part of the Paralympic team and she was the coach of the American quadriplegic rugby team.

So we took some of those guys and her husband who was a marathon wheelchair, marathon racer, and tried to climb to the top of a ghost.

She used to go and Australia, which is the highest point in Australia.

Those guys, none of them could get up the last bit because it was too steep and covered in snow.

And it was just too much to haul them up there.

But anyway, some of the cruise port crew on all got to some of the and then we got back down, then we, then I flew on from there to Argentina.

Went down to you, schwa got on a boat, cause this was a pre and this is something I had planned.

And by now I was like, huh, I might be able to get all of the seven summits in here, you know?

And so then , I went and we got on a boat and you Schwab, we went across to south Georgia island and.

Which is in the Antarctic convergence.

So it's considered Antarctica and it's the island that Shackleton came to after he had left his crew and they were on an open boat and they skit sailed 750 miles across.

I came in on the Winward sudden realized they couldn't probably sail around and get to the Leeward side.

So they, left the boat there at Peggy point and they crossed on foot across the mountains and glaciers and came down.

And, Stromness bay, which is where the whaling station was, where they had left about a year and a half earlier.

And they crossed over.

And so we followed their route.

And it may have been the first, commercially run crossing of the route.

And so we had a Malawian on, I don't remember, well, 40 people maybe, and we crossed over and then we came down into the bay where they, as the story goes, came down, people were like, who are you?

Where'd you come from?

they'd said who they were.

They're like, whoa, how'd you get here?

You know, anyway, short of it was, they then went back and went and rescued the rest of the crew, nobody died.

That was on that boat at that time.

So they Shackleton was credited with having good leadership skills and likes.

Anyway, then we went from there.

I did a little personal trip to Patagonia.

Then I went and flew down to the Antarctic guided, Vincent Massif where the crew came back from that just before Christmas went home to spend Christmas with my family, came back a couple days after Christmas to guide another really supposedly high powered group of guys who wanted to climb MOC.

Aconcagua what reasons I don't fully understand, but anyway, they were heads of big corporations and originally it was all orchestrated by.

It was going to fly in by helicopter, but reality was, it doesn't really work.

So walking is still the best way.

So, um, We got everybody in and we got up on the mountain and we got at the high camp and the winds is they can be on Aconcagua at specially at the end of December, early January.

We're just horrendous on, I had a guy who was at the time head of Northwest airlines and he said, you know, my airplane just don't wait.

Whether I don't know.

I was like, yeah, well, I've been on a few of them and they do wait for weather.

But if you'd like to go outside and stand in the wind for about 20 minutes and then come back in and tell me whether or not you want to go for the summit, I'll let you, but recognize that we're going to go up about 3000 vertical feet and it's only going to get windier and colder.

So he went out and stood out there for about five minutes and came back and goes, I'm going down.

I'm going home.

Anyway, we stayed.

We tried.

We never did get a break in the weather and we went home and I then found another expedition that I could, lead.

And I guided, another climb of Aconcagua and had maybe the prettiest, climb of Aconcagua that I may have ever had.

And that had two people from Jack who live in Jackson now, Tim see a Carlin and, a woman got, I think of her name.

mills help.

And she's now mills help mills went on to climb other things with me over the next few years, as he climbed Denali and she climbed Everest.

And, so anyway, so then I came back that was just around eight months.

So at the time it was, I was the first person to hit the highest points on each of the seven continents in less than a year.

So you can count the days, but I don't.

Jim,

how did your body feel reaching all of that altitude within a year?

Because if I have read and studied this, I mean, just for some people to recover from Everest can take months.

From that altitude alone?

Well, I was probably.

So then I could have been, and I, it didn't bother me at all, you know, you know, then I had some true family setbacks and some deaths in my family shortly thereafter.

So the next couple of years, I didn't go back to Mount Everest.

Then I started going back in 2004 until 2014.

for then I probably went every other year for maybe 20, 25 years.

I went every other year.

And then, then 2014, we were there and that was when the avalanche killed a whole bunch of Sherpas.

And.

that was a year before the earthquake, but it was a year playing the lives of a number of Sherpas that worked for us.

And really, I, haven't gone back to guide that after that I did not lose any Sherpas on my team.

I was very fortunate on all of my guys came back and went home and didn't come back to work.

we've all done our own things, still friends, but we're not necessarily climbing the highest mountain in the world any longer.

well, that's all right.

Yeah, I've done it.

And I've done it multiple times in terms of having been there and guided successful expeditions.

But the thing that's critical to all of this is all of this is guiding, right?

There's not a single one of these things that I've described that I did for my ex exclusively for myself.

I did them for as a guide, always with people in tow.

And now I'm still doing this.

I did Kilimanjaro twice in the last six months, nine months now.

and, I've got a trip to.

The Galapagos.

And then we've got a trip to Iceland and I have a trip to Nepal and autumn.

I mean, just to give myself a plug, I have a business in Jackson, which has been there for almost 20 years.

Now, it's the name of your business gym?

Explored it.

And you've been

operating this business for 20 years now.

Yeah, 22 now, apparently paperwork says I started it in 2000.

and before that it was professional mountain guides and cultural expeditions, but we, we got rid of that name and brought it all under explored us and in an effort to explore remote wilderness areas around the world,

it's spectacular.

And since you're still running trips and guiding people, how do people get in touch with you if they are interested in you putting together

a trip for them?

Well, they can reach out to the website, which is explore this.com.

They can contact me via.

email, which is Jim has explored us, or, find somebody like you and ask you how to get in touch with me, because I hear overly connected.

I have a feeling that, somebody, if they can't find, explore to us.com or find jim@exploredthis.com, they'll probably do the Google and find you that way.

Yeah.

But if you put in Jim Williams,

Mountain guide you, it will come up and that's something I forgot to mention.

Cause that's what comes up when you put it in.

There is in 2009, I was the, I was fortunate to receive the Lowell Thomas award or metal for exploration and 2000 for journeys to the edge and return the edge of uncertainty.

I is how they put it.

But anyway.

And what does that metal or award represent Jim?

Cause I'm not familiar with, well

done.

represent anything except for a recognition for the exploration that had been done as an Explorer.

And in my case, it was the fact that I, my re the recognition was for taking other people safely to the edge and bringing them back and back safely.

Right.

So the reason based on the, sort of the criteria they put out there that I qualified was because my expeditions at all, bins that had all been successful in one way or another, including no loss of human life.

and it turned out I'd taken a lot of explorers clubs members on trips around the world.

there were lots of those.

On and her still possibilities.

Well, that's

a very important accolade to say that with all of these trips that you've guided, that you've never had a loss of life in.

I think that says something about your professionalism when you're out there.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate that.

it's something that, you know, it's not only a goal.

It's sort of a mandate

until, well, well, that's important, Jim, this has been an absolute joy getting to spend time with you and honor, you've accomplished a lot in life, in a different world of what other people.

The accomplishments are, and, but it's certainly something to be recognized and appreciated and respected and value.

Then I said, thank you for taking the time to share your.

Alright, and I appreciate that I'm on the head do one thing maybe you can use that is that one thing that my father, who was at first light, not in big support of my mom.

And he was, in terms of me, going off and doing this, he said, you know, it started out as you're just a guide and a ski instructor, and that's what people do for awhile.

And he said, but you actually turned it into a profession and you.

You are truly a professional at what you do.

And yeah, I, and I respected that for one, I thought that was a pretty nice accolade from my dad.

one on a few things with me here and there, but he had the adage when it came to climbing, you know, you know, go higher than you're willing to jump from without a rope.

His deal was he didn't like to jump off the first step.

So

that tells you how much he liked climbing, but he did go on play.

He did go places and explored lots and we did quite a number of things.

So that's

awesome.

That's awesome.

Well, keep on exploring and keeping people safe.

Jim.

Thank you.

Welcome.

And we'll see, uh, at, training to be balanced very same for workout.

Well, you might not see me Friday, but you'll see me the week after.

All right.

Sounds

awesome.

Take care.

You bet.

Bye bye.

To learn more about Jim Williams and Exploradus, visit TheJacksonHoleConnection.com episode number 191.

Thank you, everybody who helps keep this podcast on the air.

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And of course my Editor and Marketing Director, Michael Moeri.

I appreciate you sharing your time with me today.