Duffel Shuffle Podcast

05/29/2026

Is free soloing worth it? It was for the Dark Wizard. 🐦‍⬛

The latest documentary about the late Dean Potter is, expectedly, reigniting debates around free soloing. There will always be controversy around climbing without protection. Some say it's selfish and reckless, others argue that individuals should be allowed to choose their own level of risk. Adrian is in the latter camp.

05/20/2026

On Everest's South Side, more than 100 people can summit in a single day. Some days, over 150.
Adrian's hard limit has always been 50 total climbers, support included. On the days the forecast shows the cleanest window, the lowest winds, the warmest temps, he sometimes picks a different day.

His reasoning: cold and wind are hazards he can plan around, up to a point. A rope of 150 at altitude introduces a different set of problems. The decision of which risk to prioritize, and where each one becomes too much, is what this week's conversation gets into.

New episode here as summit pushes begin: https://ow.ly/lRez50Z1V8P

05/15/2026

The climbers who bemoan the commercialization of mountains are usually glad to have resources when something goes awry.

The commercial season on Everest runs with infrastructure that no independent team can replicate: forecasting from groups that have spent years and significant money getting it right, fixed lines from base camp to the summit, trail already broken by the teams ahead.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just worth being honest about it.

05/13/2026

Breaking from ongoing Everest coverage, Sam and AB took a moment to remember Bernie Rosow and Will Stanhope.

Bernie drove a snowcat for work and got out more than almost anyone Adrian knows on the eastern Sierra. Will Stanhope spent decades putting up hard trad lines around the world. Both of them treated each day like an opportunity.

On this episode, Adrian talks about what it means to be surrounded by people like that, and what it does to you when they're gone.

05/08/2026

The only way to make the Khumbu Icefall safer is to put fewer people in it. 🤔

In the icefall, clients move through a handful of times across an expedition. Sherpa, high-altitude workers, and mountain guides move through it as many as six or eight times, carrying gear, fixing the route, and supporting rotations. That's where the human hours pile up, and that's where the risk concentrates.

His position is specific: allow helicopter use for repeated staff rotations, especially for Sherpa and mountain guides who do most of the load-carrying and route-fixing work. Clients still climb the icefall as part of the route. What needs to come down is the total number of staff trips through it. Fewer human hours in the icefall is the only real way to reduce icefall risk.

New Duffel Shuffle out now:

With the 2026 Everest season now firmly underway and the icefall finally open, Sam and Adrian are back for their second installment of armchair mountaineerin...

05/06/2026

Reaching the summit and completing a climb are two different things 🏔️

By Adrian's standard, a successful summit runs from base camp to the top and back to base camp under your own power. A climber who was carried by a teammate, flew out by helicopter, or was otherwise rescued on the descent did not truly complete the climb.

He applies the same standard to FKTs, and extends it to exclude the use of oxygen or altitude medicine in professional alpinism. A real speed record on a mountain should run from base to summit and back, and if any of those things were used, the record stays open.

Where do you draw the line? 👇

04/29/2026

The Khumbu Icefall opened after a 19-day standoff with a serac the size of a building. The serac is still there, cracked and active, above the only route through. Four hundred climbers are now heading up.

The official statement from the body that manages the South Side: "Given the circumstances and the limited time remaining before the peak climbing season, the team had no alternative but to open the route passing below the serac."

This speaks to the kind of risk that's kept Alpenglow off the South Side for over a decade. At the same time, it's created the perfect environment for us to revisit the discussion about what it would take for us to go back.

New episode here: https://youtu.be/sgGzLRsgYTs

04/24/2026

Ryan Mitchell went to Everest this season with one goal: summit without supplemental oxygen. When his blood oxygen dropped to dangerous levels before the climb started, he put the mask on. He's since made the call to go home.

That took real self-awareness. And it opened up a conversation Adrian has been sitting with for a long time. Where exactly is the line on a no-oxygen ascent? If Ryan had decided to recover on oxygen and then begin the climb without it, what would that have meant in terms of a no-Os ascent?

More in our latest episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgGzLRsgYTs

04/22/2026

Two Alpenglow guides are climbing the south side of Everest this season (through another operation), and Adrian isn't one of them.

Episode 53 is live now. This is part one of a series covering what's actually happening on the mountain this year. Adrian breaks down the Khumbu Icefall, the serac situation above it, and what the south side looks like, drawing on updates coming in from Topo, who is up there right now.

04/15/2026

How do you actually tell if a guide is qualified? It's a fair question, and not exactly black and white.

It's even more complex in the United States, where, unlike most other countries, guides are not legally required to have any professional training.

Formal certification gives a guide the playbook for risk assessment, rescue systems, and decision-making under pressure.

Life experience gives a guide the pattern recognition to see how those decisions actually play out when conditions change, which they often do in the mountains.

Neither one on its own is enough. Both together still won't make anyone immune to complex mountain environments. What they do is give a guide the best possible chance of reading a situation correctly and acting accordingly when it matters.