"Why Are You Still Alive?" Mike Marolt Responds to the Big Ski-Mo Question

Mike Marolt is an Aspen born and raised ski mountaineer whose exploits have covered more than three decades in the world's highest ranges.

Those exploits have included a ski descent of Everest and the first ski descent of an 8,000-meter peak (Shishapangma) by Western (Hemisphere) skiers.

Plus about 35 other ski descents in the Himalaya and Andes, many of which were first ski descents.

By any set of metrics, by any set of standards, any way you want to calculate his exploits in incredibly dangerous places, he and his teammates should be dead. But, strangely, they're not.

He recently released a video of himself talking to an interviewer about why he's not dead.

"I talk a great deal about this in my latest book: Shishapangma ," he notes in a social post. "Our expedition and success 24 years ago on the slopes of Shishapangma gave us our first lesson on death in the mountains. Bottom line, nothing to be attained climbing or skiing a mountain is worth losing a finger or toe or worse; it’s just not that important."

Marolt mentions a Taiwanese climber who died on Shish while Mike's twin brother Steve had his finger on the gent's pulse, literally.

"We were really lucky to grow up with a father who was super-conservative," Marolt notes at one point.

"The mountains aren't going anywhere and if it's not perfect, you don't have to climb it," he adds later. "People will do anything to make a name for themselves in the sport, and that's not what's all about."

I've said enough. It's more important you listen to Mike:

See you out there!