Episode 63 opens with Adrian and Sam's conversation on the devastating Nepal-China border flood at Gyirong Port, and a nod to Laura Rogora's blazing six-day ascent of Bibliographie, before settling into a wide-ranging interview with viral Minecraft-YouTuber-turned-mountaineer Ryan Mitchell.

Ryan built a following of millions making Minecraft videos before walking away to chase Mount Everest — a goal he set purely because he thought it would make a good video title. 

• With no outdoor background and guidance from Everest expert Alan Arnette, he trained for a year and a half and summited in 2024. 

• He quickly found himself hooked and a brutal, storm-battered K2 season in 2025 left him hungry to go bigger.

• This spring he set out to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen, but a botched tonsil infection and a rushed return to altitude triggered HAPE at base camp, ending the attempt and sparking a season-long debate over what counts as a "legitimate" no-oxygen ascent. 

• Ryan talks candidly about getting rescued, tuning out online criticism, and the hard lesson that ego, not fitness, is usually what gets climbers killed.

He's already looking ahead: Ryan is currently attempting Manaslu, aiming for another no-oxygen summit with a snowboard descent, and lays out a longer-term goal of climbing all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen.

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 62 opens with quick hits on T-Mobile's satellite phone service and a run of Alps headlines — climbers requesting paid rescue after ignoring a Mont Blanc closure, a family of 36 rescued in the Austrian high country, and Kilian Jornet's viral post on the range's fast-changing climate — before Sam and Adrian sit down with Cody Townsend and Tommy Caldwell to talk through their spring traverse of Norman's 13.

Norman's 13 links the Sierra's thirteen 14,000-foot peaks from Mt. Langley to North Palisade, a route of over 100 miles and 40,000 vertical feet that had never been done in winter. 

• Townsend, a self-described "5.9 climber and 5.14 skier," recruited Caldwell — the inverse — after cold-emailing him with the idea; a day of simul-climbing at Lover's Leap and some recon skiing on Mt. Sill convinced them their risk tolerances matched well enough to commit. 

• Traveling south to north over eight days with cameraman Bjarne Salén, they broke the route into three distinct stretches: a technical run through the Whitney-area peaks, a 50-mile bushwhack and river-forge through John Muir Trail sequoia groves, and a final rope-and-crampons push across the notoriously exposed Palisades Traverse.

• The trip nearly broke both of them. Townsend fought a lung infection and food poisoning through the early days, and a 25-hour closing push through isothermic snow — on a catastrophically failed ski boot — tested everyone's limits. 

• The two talk candidly about reading the line between suffering and real danger, the odd role reversal of a rock climber staying calm on exposed skiing while a skier plunge-steps nervously on rock, and how the trip changed the way Townsend plans traverses going forward. 

• A film on the expedition, shot largely on iPhone after their camera batteries mysteriously died, is due out this fall.

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

More than two years and sixty straight episodes for the Duffel Shuffle! Adrian calls in from a Nicaragua surf trip, and before getting into it, he and Sam touch on a rough week of accidents on classic trade routes (Mont Blanc, Huascarán, Rainier) and the FAA's new approval of drones for avalanche mitigation.

The real focus of the episode is a full roadmap for getting into climbing and mountaineering — for total beginners and for rock climbers eyeing high-altitude objectives alike. Adrian traces his own path in from age 12 on local Massachusetts crags through a college outdoor program that eventually got him to Ecuador at 17, and makes the case that adults break into the sport just as often as kids do.

• Sam and Adrian lay out where to actually build the skills: climbing gyms, guide companies, and clubs for the technical basics (ropes, knots, belaying, crampon work); 

• via ferrata's and plain time on trails for the underrated skill of moving efficiently on uneven, exposed terrain; and a progression from guided client to genuine climbing partner, built through repeat trips with the same guide or company. 

• And risk — how hazard and consequence combine, why mismatched risk tolerance between partners causes the most friction in the mountains, and why so much of a guide's training is really about risk management rather than technical skill.

Parting advice: don't overthink the big goal, find your first one, and give it a few real tries before deciding it's not for you.

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 www.alpenglowexpeditions.com or follow @alpenglowexpeditions on Instagram to learn more.