Editor's note: This episode was recorded on September 18, before an avalanche at Camp 3 on Manaslu killed two climbers. Our thoughts are with their families, their friends, and everyone involved in the rescue.

In Episode 64, Sam and Adrian open with quick hits on The Gear Project, a new online consignment shop for used outdoor gear, and a wave of climbing and ski films landing on major streamers this fall, before turning to the autumn Himalaya season. 

Adrian opens the episode with why post-monsoon snowpack and long stable weather windows make fall the best time for technical and ski objectives below 8,000 meters, and why an unreliable jet stream makes the highest peaks a gamble.

• Manaslu: With Cho Oyu closed and Pakistan seeing a quiet summer, more than 1,000 climbers have converged on Manaslu for a record season. Adrian, who spent four seasons there after Russell Brice first brought commercial teams in 2008, breaks down the mountain's history of massive avalanches, the wet tail of this year's monsoon, and a slide above Camp 3 that wiped out an estimated 1,300 meters of fixed rope just hours after the fixing team came down.

• The rest of the map: Dhaulagiri's low commercial success rate (and Adrian's canceled expedition there as a young climber), autumn attempts on Makalu and Annapurna, and the case for a commercial fall season on Everest's south side, where shared infrastructure could make the Khumbu Icefall affordable.

• Ama Dablam: Adrian's favorite mountain, which he has summited 13 times, and the hanging serac hazard that shapes Alpenglow's camp policy there.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit https://alpenglowexpeditions.com/ or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.

Episode 61 opens with a somber update on the Broad Peak avalanche in Pakistan that killed all ten climbers, including members of Nims Purja's team, on their July 30th summit push.

Following the update, Sam and Adrian dig into the episode's real focus: rope fixing, the process that makes the world's biggest mountains climbable.

• Adrian breaks down the difference between alpine style — climbing a mountain in one unsupported push — and siege style, where teams fix rope from camp to camp so climbers can self-belay on the way up and move quickly on the way down. The practice exploded in scale after the 1996 Everest tragedy, when climbers caught in a whiteout couldn't find their way back to tents just yards away; today, nearly the entire route on Everest, and increasingly all 14 eight-thousanders, is strung with fixed line.

• He traces how the work gets organized — from the old days of rival companies pooling gear and Sherpa labor, or tossing cash into a pot at Base Camp, to today's more formal systems: China's government-run team on Everest's north side, Nepal's Expedition Operators Association contracting the job out to local companies, and this season's milestone in Pakistan, where an all-Pakistani crew led by Mirzer Ali fixed a new line up Broad Peak's headwall — the first time a major Karakoram peak has been rope-fixed entirely by Pakistani high-altitude workers.

• Adrian shares his own path into the work, from tunneling through a collapsing cornice on Ama Dablam in the early 2000s to a 2010 rope-fixing day on Everest so calm and untracked he calls it the highlight of his life. He's candid about the risks too: anchors that melt or rip out, old abandoned ropes that fail under body weight, and the 2010 K2 tragedy that killed nine climbers after a serac collapse wiped out the fixed line and left survivors without the gear or skills to downclimb. 

His takeaway: fixed lines are an extraordinary safety tool, but never one to fully rely on without a backup plan.

Follow our podcast on Instagram @duffelshufflepodcast where you can learn more about us and our guests. Visit our website at www.duffelshufflepodcast.com and join our mailing list.

The Duffel Shuffle Podcast is supported by Alpenglow Expeditions, an internationally renowned mountain guide service based in Lake Tahoe, California. Visit https://alpenglowexpeditions.com/ or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more