I still get asked quite a lot by first time heliskiers,
am I going to have to jump out of the helicopter?
And you're like, oh my god, don't please do not
jump out of the helicopter.
We have a problem with your bailing.
Yeah, if you're jumping out of the helicopter,
I better have already jumped out of the helicopter.
You better be chasing me.
So because people just have so much more access to media
and stuff, I think there's an expectation of what
it might be out there.
And I think that causes a lot of anxiety in people.
And when you're like, no, no, no, we're
going to do nothing like that.
We're going to go do this.
A lot of people are like, oh, I'm so relieved.
I don't think it doesn't have to be this huge,
debt-defying thing.
We're not going to go outrun avalanches all day long.
That's not what we're trying to do out there.
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All right, let's get to the show.
Welcome back to the All Aspects podcast.
We've got a special guest today, my personal hairstylist
and brother, who's an internationally certified
mountain guide as well, a longtime senior instructor
for the AMGA, an examiner.
He's a Mammut athlete for a long time as well.
And he's run multiple heli operations in foreign countries
and currently heli guiding up in Canada,
just back home for a little stint
before he's off to Iceland for the heli season there.
And all around Jack of all trades, my brother, Steve Banks.
Woo!
Golf clap.
Steve, welcome.
Thank you.
Psyched me out.
Can I just jump right into this one for you guys?
So you guys went through the mountain guide training together,
right?
Yeah, for the most part.
So did you, Steve, get Jeff into the guiding thing,
or can you give me the origin story there?
Yeah, sort of.
Jeff was busy at college back east,
and I was busy dropping out of college in the west
and spending more time in the mountains.
And Jeff came out to visit.
I think it was in the summertime,
and we had some summer adventures.
And I had been exploring more in the back country out here
in Crested Butte, Colorado, and just doing a lot more skiing
out in the mountains.
And was fortunate enough to be learning from a Swiss mountain
guide who is here in Crested Butte.
And it was actually him and another guy here in Crested Butte
who started ARI, an American Institute for Abolance Research
and Education.
And so I was fortunate enough to get my early avalanche
education from them.
Kind of as ARI was being formed and formulated,
it wasn't really a super official thing at the time.
And through this Swiss mountain guide, Jean Pavillard,
I also did some other, he was doing guide trainings.
They weren't necessarily sanctioned AMGA courses.
But I started doing some guide trainings for him.
He introduced me to the AMGA.
He was an instructor and examiner at the time.
And I thought that sounded pretty cool.
So I signed up for a course.
I mentioned it to Jeff.
For some reason, Jeff thought it was a good idea.
So we jumped over to Aspen and did our first ski guide course
over there, which was rather eye-opening.
Nice.
I remember Steve, you said, hey, I was ski coaching, Nordic
ski coaching at the time pretty seriously.
And I didn't even really know that guiding was really a career.
I was pretty naive.
And Steve's like, hey, I'm going to go do an AMGA ski guide
course over at Aspen.
You want to do it with me.
And I was like, sure.
What's the AMGA and what's the ski guide's course?
But I mean it.
And then we were driving.
Real ready-fire approach.
Yeah, after 10 days, our hair blown back.
And we were on the North Rim of the Black Canyon
in a snowstorm.
And I was, I'm a horrible co-pilot.
I always fall asleep.
And when I woke up from my dreams
as we were whipping around these crazy corners
over the abyss and the darkness, I was like,
this is what I'm going to do with my life.
And here's the next three and a half years plotted out,
just like a training program for ski racing.
This is how I'm going to train for guiding.
And then, yeah, that's my life.
Are there.
So did you guys both do AMGA?
Like what's the pro, I mean, for the normies like me out there,
like what's the full process to become an AMGA guide?
So the process with the AMGA is, well,
it's evolving right now and changing a little bit.
And but there's a couple of different entry points.
When Jeff and I started, you could
enter at whichever discipline you wanted.
So if you're a rock climber, you could start with the rock
discipline and the alpine discipline or we were skiers.
So we started with the ski courses.
That's changed a little bit over the years
and it's evolving now.
And then essentially there's a, for each discipline,
there's an introductory level course where you learn
kind of the basics.
And then there's an advanced level course that also
has an examination component.
And then there's the final exam, each one.
And so the entry level courses tend to be around 10 days.
The advanced courses are about 10 days as well.
And the exam is anywhere from eight to 10 days.
So all told, if you go through all of it,
now there's a lot of offshoot courses as well.
There's a ice climbing, a week long ice climbing course.
There's sort of different pathways
that you can go through the AMGA to get the education a little
more tailored to what you want.
And at the same time, the AMGA has
to meet the standards of the IFMGA,
the International Federation of Mountain Guide Associations,
it kind of sets that standard.
So is that then real quick, Jeff,
is that like a pretty natural progression
for a lot of AMGA guides that they just then naturally
go for the IFMGA?
Boy, I wouldn't say it's super natural
that a lot of people do a lot of it.
What I see instructing a lot of courses
is that the deeper people get in,
the more they want to go the distance.
In the intro courses, people tend to be like, well,
this is what I need to do for the work that I want to do right
now.
And I'm kind of checking it out to see where it goes.
Some people, and I would say in the ski,
it's common that people are just focused on the ski discipline.
They want to be a ski guide.
They're not really climbers.
They don't really want to do that.
Or there's a lot of rock guides who don't ski,
and they're like, I want to be a rock guide,
and that's what I want to do.
Gotcha.
So it just depends.
It's up to each individual.
And Dave, both of you guys started with skiing?
Yeah.
OK.
And Dave, you can kind of think of it
as getting your education.
Like lots of people finish elementary school,
a few less finish high school, a few less go to college,
few less finish college, and then it's less and less
for their masters and then their PhD.
This is your PhD in mountain guiding.
And the time commitment is somewhere
between four and 10 years for most people
to get their full international certification.
But that means also about 10 years of building your resume
before you can be accepted into the advanced programs,
because you need to have climbed 6,000 meter peaks,
vertical water ice, taking your pro level avalanche classes,
done your woofer, climbed big walls on El Cap,
or long trad routes, and be a 5'11 climber.
So you need to be really well-rounded, jack of all trades.
So most people are fully committed,
focused on being in the mountains,
and their skill set, and their movement, their technique,
and picking off their prerequisites
as they go before they come into the program.
Or they're like, oh, shoot, I haven't done
any high altitude mountaineering.
I better do an expedition to Denali for all of June
or all of July so I can get that experience.
OK, cool.
Nice.
I knew that it was like a pilot getting your flight hours.
It's like you've got to.
Just like, yeah.
Yeah.
And then the course.
There's a lot to it.
Yeah.
And then you've got to pass your courses and exams,
which it's a funny kind of stress,
because we're used to existential stress,
like life or death stress in the mountains, like, oh my god,
seracs, avalanches, rockfall, whatever.
But there's this social stress that
tends to freak out guides way more
than the actual real stress.
It's that psychological stress of, oh my gosh,
I've invested so much time, money, and energy.
I really need to pass this course or exam.
And it's a pretty traumatic experience for most candidates.
Do you guys, I think Jeff mentioned this at some point,
but you guys have to go back and like re-certify,
or is that only in France?
Or what's the deal with that?
It's definitely a French thing.
Different countries handle it differently.
Technically, the AMGA does have a requirement
that you are doing continuing professional development,
but there is no real script for how that gets done.
For me, and it's an interesting thing for a lot of different
people and how different people approach it,
I feel like for me, because mountain guiding is what I do.
So I'm in it.
I'm immersed in it all the time.
So I'm staying more current that way.
And then also teaching and examining for the AMGA
is a huge benefit too, because the annual trainings that we do
stay up to speed with new techniques,
new things that are evolving, as well as just continually
going through the process.
And I love to tell my students all the time too.
I learn a lot during every course that I teach,
whether it's somebody from a different region is like,
hey, here's a technique that we use where I'm from.
I'm like, oh, wow, I haven't seen that before.
Or just by the questions that people
ask that then force me to think harder about what it is I've
been doing and what it is that I know
and see if I can reformulate that in a different way
or see if there's a better way to think about it
and approach it.
So I really value my work for the AMGA
for helping to keep me current and on top of my game
personally.
Is there a, well, that's kind of segues into another question
I have.
And this is for both of you, either one of you guys
and take this.
This is pretty much me now just picking
two Mountain Guides brains.
But have you noticed a difference, say,
in the time that you guys have been doing this as your career?
Have you noticed a general trend difference
in the mentality of the people that you're guiding,
say, in the last 10 years or 20 years?
Like, has that changed?
Like, if it hasn't, that's fine.
But to me, it seems like there's so much more emphasis
on kind of like the psychology of playing
in the back country now.
But like, when I first took an avi course a long time ago
when I was like 19, it was all just like snow science.
Yeah, I'd say that's an interesting one.
And I don't know that I've seen necessarily a trend
because client profiles are all over the board
from 20 years ago when I started till now.
I think now I might be more proficient at being
able to sort of read people and maybe deliver them
a better experience that's more tailored
to what they're looking for.
It's just, you know, it's incredibly different
whether I'm taking out like a father and daughter
on their first Alpine climb or if I'm taking out
a long time ski client who we've done tons of trips
and huts trips and long traverses
and ski mountaineering objectives.
So it's really hard to say, you know,
the sort of the client profile has evolved over time.
Although I would say that with social media
and, you know, ski movies being such a big thing and stuff,
there is people tend to think that anytime,
I guess, heliskings, an interesting one,
I still get asked quite a lot by first time heliskiers,
am I gonna have to jump out of the helicopter?
And you're like, oh my God, don't please do not jump
out of the helicopter.
We have a problem with your bailing.
Yeah, if you're jumping out of the helicopter,
I better have already jumped out of the helicopter.
You'd better be chasing me.
So, you know, because people just have so much more access
to media and stuff, I think there's an expectation
of what it might be out there.
And I think that causes a lot of anxiety in people.
And when you're like, no, no, no,
we're gonna do nothing like that.
You know, we're gonna go do this.
A lot of people are like, oh, I'm so relieved.
I don't, it doesn't have to be this, you know,
huge debt-defying thing.
Like we're not gonna go outrun avalanches all day long.
That's not what we're trying to do out there.
Oh my God. Interesting.
Huh. Hey, Dave, I think this is a great line
of questioning to hit Steve up with.
Steve, for different groups, for clients,
for guide candidates, you're teaching or examining,
and then for colleagues,
what are some of the silliest stuff you've seen?
And I'll start off to give you a moment to think
because one of the best things I ever saw was in Shominy.
We're up there on the glacier,
first day, second day in Krampons, pre-dawn start,
and we're walking across the glacier all roped up.
And then I hear on the radio,
hey, you gotta check out the folks in the middle of the pack.
And they had their Krampons with the points going upwards
into the boot, and they had managed to strap them on
securely, because we had been walking for like,
I don't know, 800 meters, almost a kilometer in the dark.
And it gave me a great deal of empathy
because it was like, yeah, it was hilarious and funny,
but we all make silly goofy mistakes when we don't know.
It's the full-on Dunning and Kruger effect.
We don't know what we don't know, because no one told us.
And I was like, well, that's on us as guides
because we didn't show them well enough
how to put on their Krampons the day before
when we were practicing or having practiced enough
so they could do it early in the morning at altitude
in the dark when they're kind of like,
whoa, I'm kind of stressed and peeling the onion back.
So what's your greatest hits, highlights,
the funny stuff that people have done with you in the mountains?
I remember, and this is way back,
I was still a new Avalanche course instructor.
So this must be like, around the turn of a century,
in the early 2000s, might have even been 2000 or 2001.
And we do our two-hour classroom stint,
make sure everybody's got all their gear.
Everybody's like, yes, yes, yes,
I have everything I need.
This one guy has Alpine boots.
And I'm like, you got your ski set up and your skins,
like everything's dialed, he's like, oh yeah, yeah,
everything's good.
I'm like, okay, some people just go in their Alpine boots.
To me, that's not an awesome thing to do,
but some people are gonna do that.
Okay, we get out to the trailhead,
everybody's putting their skins on, I'm looking around,
I'm like, okay, it looks like everybody's good.
We click in, we go to do our beacon check.
And he had skins, sure enough,
and just put them right on the bottom of his Alpine rig
with Alpine bindings that clicked right in.
It was just gonna shuffle his way out to Abby Wundlain.
And I was like, oh, that is just not gonna work, buddy.
Sorry.
Actually, Steve, I can tell you, I'm sorry,
this is like a one-upper.
I saw a guy, a Danish guy, he was in tandem
on the same itinerary as my group on the Oat Root.
He skied from Chomany to Zerma in Alpine boots
and Alpine bindings, unbelievable.
Just shuffling along?
I mean, he was in agony, and he was so physically destroyed,
I was concerned that we were gonna have to call the chopper
while you were skinning up, but he would just not quit.
Talk about a crazy Viking.
And his friends were always cheering him on
in the whole, like an hour behind,
and we'd all be just laying around,
eating our lunch in the sun in the beautiful weather.
He was just like, and he was groaning the whole...
His hand must be blown out.
Six, seven days.
I mean, it's that saying,
you gotta be dumb, you better be tough.
And he was tough as nails.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, but all those kinds of experiences
have led me down the path of like, never assume, right?
Like with our clients, with our students,
even with our back country partners,
we have to go through everything so thoroughly
and just not assume that we're all on the same page,
or we can't assume that we all know
exactly what's going on.
I mean, it still happens all the time, right?
You're standing there on top of a slope with your partner,
and you're like, hey, why don't you go first?
And I think we should group up over by that tree.
Everybody's like, yeah, yeah, we'll group up by that tree.
And then your partner starts skiing down,
and you're like, wow, they just went right past the tree
that I was talking about, they're way down there
by that other tree.
Okay.
Yeah, so we just have to be so clear about communication
and expectations when we're out there
to make sure that we're all firmly on the same page.
And that's a lesson that you continue to learn.
And you're like, okay, maybe I need to learn
how to phrase things differently
or choose my words more carefully
so that people know exactly what it is
that I'm talking about.
One of the things I sort of semi-jokingly talk about
when I'm teaching guide training stuff is that I always say,
I want to make sure that I tell everybody
about any potential hazards or what they should do
if for no other reason so that when the bad thing happens
or they did it wrong, I can say, hey, I told you.
I told you there was a cliff there.
I told you the snow was going to change or whatever it is.
Because that way it makes me feel more assured
that I did my part, I informed them,
I did everything I could to steer them away from that thing.
And then some people just aren't going to get it
and they're still going to go there anyway.
So I'm sure you guys have both,
I've heard some of Jeff's stories,
but you guys have both seen some pretty ridiculous,
funny stuff.
Have you seen some pretty goofy,
I don't know if they're mishaps
or just misunderstandings like amongst
when you're doing guide courses,
compared to like just normies,
learning Abbey courses and that kind of stuff?
Yeah, that still happens.
It's an interesting thing when people get into guide courses
and I always try to think back to where I was
when I started doing my guide trainings
and remember that I was out of my depth at times too.
Because it's not fair just to be like,
oh my God, you're an idiot.
Like there's no way you can be a guide.
Like I was that idiot 20 years ago
and I was trying to do stuff too, right?
And often the students are just getting so overwhelmed
with so much new information.
They've maybe been traveling for a while
to get to wherever this course is
and they're feeling all this like social pressure
to perform and they just kind of do stupid things.
I've climbed up to rock courses,
I've climbed up to anchors and been like,
oh my God, that's a terrifying anchor.
I can't believe you did that
or seen somebody completely load a belay device incorrectly
even though I know they know how to do it
and they've shown they know how to do it
and then they just brain fart and don't do it
and they don't do it right.
And that's an important learning lesson for everyone
to make sure that you have to be double and triple
checking yourself all the time.
We can't just assume, oh, I haven't taught how to do this
or I'm a guide now so I can do these things great.
We all make mistakes and miss things
and our minds wander and go somewhere else
and it's hard to be hyper vigilant all the time.
And especially when we're doing something
that we're very accustomed to
or that we feel very comfortable with,
seems like that's when we really screw up stuff.
Lastly, a good buddy of mine who I've been his boss,
he's my boss now in one of my jobs,
but when we met, he came to Crested Butte
to do a level two avalanche course.
And I had arranged for us to get a snow cat ride
up towards Irwin so that we could get it deeper
into the back country and go further away.
And we got up there and this is a guide level training
so I'm not like, does everybody have their undies on?
Everybody ready to go?
You know, I'm not double checking everything.
And we get up there and in the transition
from cars to snow cat, he had put his ski boots
in the snow bank and there they sat.
Yeah.
This guy is an IFMGA guide now
and a great personal friend of mine
we work closely together.
We teach a lot of courses for special forces
and things like that, you know, dude's on his game.
And even back then he was pretty on his game,
but there's ski boots were in the snow bank.
So you got a 12,000 feet at summit at the ridge top
and he's like, oh, I better put my ski boots on.
It was like, oh no.
It was before, but yeah, like 10, five.
So a couple of years ago I was teaching a ski guide's course
for the AMGA and the San Juan's.
And I think what you were saying, Steve,
is like the cognitive fatigue.
Like we only have a certain number of decisions in us
at a day and so you want to have checklists to offload
and systems and frameworks to help you.
So you don't have to use as much brain power.
And we were firehosing the students so much
and the travel was a lot and conditions were really tricky.
So like really difficult pre-route planning
and looking at weather forecasting models and stuff.
And they forgot the critical piece
for their splitboard bindings.
So they could skin, but they couldn't put it together.
And she was just tough as nails and she's like, I'll be fine.
And I was like, what do you mean you're gonna be,
we're gonna be skiing 3000 vert at like 35 degrees
on the anvil.
What are you talking about?
And she just did it.
And I was like, wow, okay, that was really impressive.
Way to like pull it together,
just use volet straps to like lock the heel down
and ski with the heel fixed on frozen corn to good corn
all the way down to the road.
I was just like, whoa, okay.
Nice. Damn.
Good moves.
So this winter was something new for me.
I decided to do something radically different
and I took a job with CMH up in Canada.
And it's very different for me
because I'm used to working with small groups,
programs that I put together,
operations that I run tend to be on the smaller side.
And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go work for the man.
Let's see how this goes.
And it was super cool.
Really quick.
Can you just tell what CMH is?
You don't know, Dave.
It's not about me, man.
It's about the 25 people who listen to this podcast.
They can also send me a text and ask.
CMH is Canadian Mountain Holidays.
It's the original pioneer of heli skiing.
It's the largest heli ski organization in the world, I think.
And they're pretty well known
for kind of having their shit together.
And I kind of wanted to go see what that was all about.
And I was super impressed.
I worked with a great team of guides that really,
really had it together.
The organization in general,
like Top Down was really set in the bar.
And it takes a lot to impress me.
Jeff knows that.
So I was pretty psyched to be joined in the team.
But one of the older members of our guide team,
he's been around there for a long time.
He, I know him and he doesn't know me,
but I know him as a mentor
because he has written papers for ISSW,
the International Snow Science Workshop.
He's done lots of avalanche research,
come up with new techniques
that most guide services now are employing on a daily basis.
And I was like, holy smokes, I get to work with him.
That's awesome.
And then we were swapping tails one day
and somebody had messed something up.
And it wasn't anything consequential.
I think it was something around the lodge or something like that.
And he recounted this tale of getting his group
together, doing the beacon check,
loading into the helicopter, taking off,
and looking down and realizing
that he was still in his sorrells and not in his ski boots.
And he was like, that's what I realized.
There's three ways to deal with a problem.
One, can I blame it on somebody else?
Nope, can't blame that on somebody else.
Two, can I make this work anyway?
Nope, definitely can't make this work.
Okay, number three, I got to own up to my mistake
and go back and fix it.
We had a good laugh out of that.
But the moral of the story was that often in the mountains
or in guiding when things are going sideways,
the tendency is to try to push through and make it work.
Like Jeff was just talking about,
like I can just knuckle down and make it work.
When really the right answer is, wait a minute,
well, let's go back to a known point in time here
where we can reset, make things right,
and then carry forward.
And when I think about some of the times
when I've had bad times in the mountains,
it's usually because I was unwilling to say,
oh, let's go back and reset.
And instead I was like, let's just keep pushing forward,
let's go.
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a theme
we've talked about a lot on here is just that trying to,
if you try to make something happen
when like all the signs are not working out
or not pointing in that direction,
like that is one of the most likely chances
that the real shit is gonna start.
Like if you keep kind of pursuing that direction,
I suppose.
But Jeff will probably remember this story.
This was a long time ago.
And should I be nervous?
Hey, is this about Jeff?
No, I think it reflects more poorly on me,
but maybe Jeff is wrong.
We used to do stupid things like the Grand Traverse race
that goes from Crested Butte to Aspen
in the middle of the night.
I don't know why we did that stuff,
but it was cool, I guess.
And I remember we had been training for that
and for us training usually just meant like,
it wasn't like it is now where people are like,
let's put on our skin suits and go hammer out some fur.
We would just go out and, you know,
like call it ski three big lines in a day
and that would be our training.
And a big storm had come through Crested Butte
and it was high danger.
And we were like, well, let's go out anyway.
It'll just be a training mission
and we'll just stay away from avalanches and stuff.
And so we start by going out the Gothic Valley
and we decided to do this big tour,
go out one valley around this pass
and back down the other valley.
And we looked at the maps and we identified
that there was some avalanche terrain,
but hey, we're aspiring guides.
We can outsmart this avalanche problem
and we'll figure it out when we get there,
even though it's high danger, right?
And this was a huge, as I reflect on it,
this was a huge learning point for me at least at the time.
So we go out, we left, I don't know when we left,
reasonably early in the day.
And we encountered this, you know,
we had already gone for several hours
before now we encountered this first avalanche prone slope
that we have to cross.
And it was fairly small and quite manageable.
And we stood there and had a conversation about it.
We were like, what do you think?
And we were both like, well,
I think we'll probably trigger it,
but I think it'll also be very small
and it won't be a big deal.
Learning point number one came quickly into play.
I was like, well, I'll go first.
And I trucked out there and sure enough,
I triggered this small slope and the avalanche comes down.
And it was a little ankle biter.
It's like filling in around my boot tops.
And I'm kind of like, yeah, okay.
Turn my skis downhill and I'm kind of
tropping along with it, no big deal.
But the critical mistake I had is that
since we were training for this race,
I had different equipment than my normal backcountry setup.
So I had longer ski poles, more like Nordic ski poles,
with large baskets on it.
And I put my hands through the wrist straps,
which I never do when I'm skiing an avalanche train.
But because my mindset was in,
we're training for this race that we do kind of in
backcountry slash Nordic fashion,
I put my hands through the ski straps.
Well, when the moving snow caught the larger baskets
of my ski poles and I couldn't let go of them,
it pulled me right down on my face.
And it was super slow motion.
This small avalanche that I was kind of chuckling about.
And all of a sudden I'm pulled down fully prone,
face down in the snow, pointed downhill,
got completely buried.
I wasn't buried by much because I could kind of
wiggle my head and Jeff could see that snow moving.
And so that's how he knew where I was and came over
and I'm buried.
My feet were still buried a couple of feet down,
but I couldn't move.
I was stuffed in there.
Even though I was barely covered by snow,
if Jeff hadn't dug me out,
I'd surely would have suffocated in it.
And but he pulls me out, digs me out,
dusts me off.
And we're like, that was funny.
Okay, lesson learned.
I'll take my pole straps off.
Should we go back?
Nah, let's keep going.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
And that was like the first,
like that probably wasn't even a point that we had identified
where we were going to have trouble
with the avalanche problem.
We were like, let's just keep moving.
Like we're a third of the way through it.
Let's just keep going.
Let's keep going.
What else could possibly happen?
So we keep on going and it's high danger.
It sounded like the laser guns in Star Wars.
Like, pew, pew, like a blaster.
Cause that was the sound of the collapses.
It was so distinct.
It was like someone taking a hammer to a guy wire
for a telephone pole under tension and going,
bang, pew, pew.
What?
It was wild.
All of the signs were there
and we were recognizing all the signs and being like,
oh yeah, man, super touchy out here, right?
But we're avalanche professionals.
We can navigate around this.
No problem.
Well, out smart of problem.
Not yet.
We weren't quite there.
Nobody was paying me to make decisions.
Thank God.
You were on your way.
Aspiring.
So we continue, we continue on further up the valley.
And then Jeff, I can't even remember what mountain it was,
but I believe in my mind, it's cinnamon.
I'm not entirely sure.
We come out of the corner and we're starting to get close
to the place where we were like, yeah, that's going to be
the tricky point that we're going to have to navigate.
Like we're going to have to go through avalanche train
at this point.
And so we're approaching that point.
We're starting to feel more ominous.
It's deep snow.
Travel had been tricky.
I already got buried.
So that ate up some time.
So it's like later in the day that we expected.
And we remotely trigger from very far away this massive avalanche.
Like literally a whole mountain.
We were on the valley floor and we were about to have to cross
the run out in the flats.
And everywhere we went, we were getting that.
And I just started jumping up and down in one place.
And Steve looks at me like I'm some sort of fucking idiot.
And then it remotely triggers from me jumping up and down in
place from the summit all the way to the valley floor.
It was so cool.
And you guys just happened to be totally out of the run out zone.
Yeah.
Yeah. We were lucky.
Luckily for us, it was touchy enough that we were able to trigger
it from really far away.
And so after that thing, Rad, we were kind of like, okay,
I think now we need to readjust.
And we should probably go back.
And so now we got to go back, which is a good thing.
Because as I think about it now, Jeff, we, you know,
we were going to have to go through Paradise divide across that
slope under Baldy.
No way.
No way. There's no way.
Yeah.
Hopefully we would recognize that.
That's your way out of there.
Yeah. That was the slope that we had been like, well,
that's the one we're going to have to use our superpowers to
navigate around.
So we turn around and go back.
Paper.
Yeah.
So you got to use a little hard reader, like a credit card,
but it's translucent plastic.
And the lines show you approximately they,
they line up the gaps between the lines on the card lines up on
the topo map, the USGS topo map.
And you guess at about what the slope angle is.
And we're like, I think we can keep it like right around 30,
31, 32 in the steep areas. I don't know.
It's hard to tell.
So it's a totally antiquated system where you're like,
I don't really know what we're getting into based on the map,
but I think it might go.
And it's like that.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha.
I'm getting a better picture of just how, uh,
how dicey this was.
I have that card reader somewhere around here.
I just, I just encountered it in one of my notebooks.
It was like, why do I still have this thing?
The thing that makes you go cross-eyed looking at it because
you're squinting so hard to try to see the relationship.
And in my mind, we finally, at this point,
we finally go, okay, well, we better turn around.
That was like the obvious sign from the heavens.
We get the heck out of here.
So we turn around and go back and we still have to negotiate like
these tight little spots where you're just,
you're in these train traps surrounded by avalanche train.
It's just continuing to puke snows.
And our conditions are worse than when we came through it the first time.
Our tracks are pretty much gone.
And I remember Jeff, we were back by the plug and we were like,
oh, shit. And I don't know why.
I think, I think he made some statement like, well,
I'm the older brothers. Like, yes, I'll go first.
We're both just like,
surely we're going to try this.
But we made it through. We got back to Gothic.
This was now it's been dark for like hours by the time we get back
to the Gothic town site.
We're back to the city.
So I think we're going to get back to the site.
We're going to get back to the city.
But we're going to get back to the city.
Before we get back to the city,
I was talking about that.
Despite some of those numbers,
but it's time to get back to the Gothic town.
So we see it.
A light on up on the hillside in one of the cabins.
And some of those cabins have phones and we were like,
we should probably go and call and tell people that we're okay.
Because we were.
If you're not,
if we were supposed to get picked up on the other side or what.
Anyway, we're, we're like, you know, hours late.
We've been moving in the dark for probably three hours at this
Can we use your phone?
Call and my buddy had actually had gotten worried enough that he was just loading up
his snowmobile to come out and start looking for us.
And I don't know where the hell he was going to go and look for us anyway.
Dude, I'm not even able to get anywhere.
But as I reflect on that, and this is often, I don't tell the whole entire story, but
it's often a point I try to make with people is that just because you learn more, it doesn't
mean that you can outsmart the avalanche problem.
Because a lot of people feel like, you know, they take a level one avalanche course and
then they go out there and they're still super uncertain.
They're like, I don't know, am I making good decisions or not?
Can I go ski a bigger line today or not?
I really want to go ski these big mountains, but I don't know if I have the skills.
Oh, I know, I'll go take a level two course.
They take a level two course and they learn some more stuff.
And then they're still like, well, I don't really feel super confident.
I don't feel like I know everything.
I want to be able to, you know, outrun the dragon.
And so then they're like, even though they're not trying to be a ski patrol or a guide or
something, maybe they go and take a pro level course thinking that then they'll learn the
answers.
And it's like, you know what, you're never going to learn the answers.
There's just times when you just cannot be an avalanche.
You just can't and you shouldn't be close to it.
There's times when you can start to tow that line a little bit.
But you also have to start to understand when is the right time to do that and when is the
right time to do that for me is totally different than it is for the right time to do it for
Jeff or for you, Dave or for different people.
You see it all the time, especially around here in Crested View where people are sending
big lines and I'm like, I'm not doing that.
And it's not because they have more avalanche education than I do.
Arguably, they have far less.
And it's not because I'm not a good enough skier.
And it's not because they're making stupid decisions.
It's just that that's where their risk assessment and acceptance of that risk is just different
than mine.
And so that's always an interesting thing to go about.
And it's going to be different even with guides, right?
Some guides are going to push a little bit harder.
I know guides who I have clients who don't want to go with them because they feel like
that guide pushes too hard.
And on the flip side, I know guides that clients don't like to go with because they're like,
wow, that guide is like way too conservative for what I want to do.
So everybody kind of needs to find their own niche in that.
People ask me all the time, you know, like the difference between skiing in different
areas, you know, what's the skiing like in Japan?
What's it like in Canada?
What's it like in Alaska, Iceland, South America, all these different things?
And a lot of it comes down to which operation or guides are you going with and what type
of experience is offered.
And it's going to match differently with different people.
And same with guides as far as like operations that they might want to work with.
I've worked for operations where I'm like the risk tolerance of this ski operation is
higher than what I'm comfortable with.
And I don't like being pushed that hard.
And so I just don't want to work there anymore.
I'm going to go someplace that's more conservative or aligns more with how I feel and the team
jives better.
That was one of the things I really appreciated at CMH is that as a team, you know, I was
a new guy to the team.
And as the team, it was like everything really jived like the pace, the risk tolerance, how
we liked things to flow throughout the day.
I felt like I fit into that quite nicely and it felt comfortable to me.
I didn't ever feel like I was being pushed to go faster, to go higher, to go bigger or
anything like that.
And to me, that's something that's super important, whether it's just my ski partners or the operation
that I'm working for or the other guides that I'm around.
I don't ever want to feel like I'm being pushed to do things that I don't want to do.
To go back a bit, Steve, I think you're talking about risk homeostasis.
It's like I'm driving a beat up old Chevy Gremlin, you know, that's like a death trap
and driving really cool.
Or Pinto.
Yeah, Pinto, Gremlin, same thing.
And versus, you know, a Volvo with airbags all around with studded Haka, Polita tires.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to do 65 in this blizzard because there's nothing coming.
Why not?
And we often see that where folks are like, why are you here for your level two Avalanche
course?
They're like, because I want to send the NAR in Colorado midwinter.
And you're like, oh, sorry, you're going to have a short but exciting life.
Yeah.
Is that common?
Like, I mean, I grew up in Colorado, so I think I just have a skewed view on this.
But when people are going into Abbey courses, like, is that something you still get a lot?
I would just think like at this point enough people know how dangerous and like how unpredictable
it is that there would be less of that, but am I totally off on that?
You know, I sort of think that it's a it's a symptom of the Avalanche phenomenon and
the uncertainty that we just deal with.
Right.
And so, Dave, Dave, what's your Avalanche education?
What have you done?
I've taken two level ones and I hang out with Jeff with too much.
You're the remedial student.
You had to go back and repeat it.
Yeah, what?
So to be honest, I took one way back in the day and then I was like skiing professionally
doing like park half pipe stuff.
And in that time, I had several friends who were very, very like knowledgeable in the
back country who got killed by Avalanches.
So I was like, nope, there's no fucking way.
Like they are literally so much far so much further beyond me with their education and
their awareness in the back country.
Like I don't have a chance if they got smoke, I don't have a chance.
And so it really wasn't until start hanging out with Jeff and we started talking about
aspect of you more and like kind of seeing it from more of a data driven approach and
more of a like, hey, rather than put all the focus on how to rescue your friend, which
I thought Larry put Larry was on like last podcast.
He put it so well.
He's like, that should be like CPR.
We should like, you should have those skills, but that should be the absolute last resort,
which is the way I always felt.
I was like, I want to know, like give me the data so I can just like go enjoy myself.
And then like, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to get super gnarly.
Like those days are behind me, but let's take that CPR analogy for a quick bend right
here.
Okay.
How come, how come if I want to guide in the US, I have to have a permit and part of being
having that permit, I have to have a first aid course and CPR in case somebody's dying
on me, but I don't have to actually be trained as a guide to prevent somebody from dying
on me.
Yeah.
And I find avalanche education is often the same.
People want to play with their sexy beacons and shovels and probes and like, how fast
can you find three beacons?
And I'm like, I don't really care.
I'd rather focus on how fast can I make decisions so that I don't need to use my beacon.
Totally.
But the point I was going to make before that when I was asking about your avalanche education,
after you took your second level one, do you feel like you walked out of there feeling
very confident that now you can go ski big lines?
No, absolutely not.
And I actually like a huge, a huge reason that I'm involved in this project is I feel
like, and this is just straight up because I've talked to people my age who say this,
they're like, yeah, I take this training and I feel like I like have some sort of qualification
now.
But when I really dive into it, I don't actually know what's going on.
But I feel the exact same way.
Yeah.
And I think that's why people continually strive to find more avalanche education.
And really the level one course, the goal of the level one course when, when Aries sort
of started putting these parameters around things and saying, this is what a level one
avalanche course is, what they stated at that time, and it still rings true, is that a level
one course is a standalone, this is everything you need to know about avalanches.
And everything beyond that is like mostly geeky science stuff.
Most people don't need to know.
And that led into the pro track and the rec track split that happened in the last few
years, an avalanche education, which was definitely needed.
But it's not like math, right?
If you go, math is very cut and dry.
A plus B equals C, no matter what.
That's how it is.
And so, which is why, which is why I like math and high school.
I like cool.
The answer is the answer.
That works for me.
But people want the same out of their avalanche education, right?
How many times do I hit the shovel before I know that I can go ski this slope?
Well, it doesn't work that way.
Well, how many degrees above zero is okay before avalanche?
Well, it doesn't work that way, right?
And so people are continuing to look for that answer.
And it's not like math where if you get an A on the test, you know how to do math, right?
It's not like if you get an A on your avalanche test, well, you're never going to die in an
avalanche.
And statistically speaking, most people who die in avalanches have avalanche education.
So it's not like they weren't aware.
But it's just a tricky thing.
Like there's no cut and dry answers.
I've seen plenty of avalanches that I go, why?
That doesn't make sense to me.
Why did that one avalanche?
And that one didn't.
I don't get it.
I left Canada had a real bad season this year.
It was just it didn't snow.
It got super warm.
It rained really high and then it snowed and then it sat.
And so that surface snow turned into facets.
And then right when I left, it started nuking.
Places got like a meter to two meters of snow.
And that's all sitting on top of, you know, 15 to 30 centimeters of facets on top of a
stout crust.
And, you know, when we're seeing the weather forecast, everybody's like, oh, great.
Now finally snowing in the world is going to fall down.
Perfect.
And I saw this video from a heli ski operation where they were skiing this slope here.
And this was the video is from a client with a GoPro on and they stopped and regrouped.
They're in trees, pretty thick dense trees.
Moderate angle certainly didn't look steep.
Somebody drops in to ski the next pitch down and then you see this giant powder cloud on
an adjacent slope.
Right.
And it's like, okay, so remote trigger, they triggered it from here and it's slid over there.
You look at the terrain and there's no huge drastic difference that you would say, oh,
I can see why that slid and that did it.
Like the change was very subtle, slightly more open trees, slightly steeper.
But that's after like going back and really deciphering that terrain.
So sometimes these differences in what's safe and what isn't are super subtle.
And sometimes I'm still baffled by it.
Like I don't know why that slid and that didn't.
Or I don't know why that didn't slide.
I would have thought that that would slide and it didn't.
So it just doesn't always make sense in the avalanche world.
It's not perfect math by any means.
Yeah, and to be fair, I think we've said a few times on here, various different guests,
but like there's a lot of, I don't know, how do you say it, Jeff, where even when you
do the wrong thing, sometimes you get away with it.
So how are you supposed to, like how, how then are you going to know that it was actually
the wrong thing to do if you got away with it?
It's a wicked learning environment.
We don't get direct feedback.
Like if you're playing chess or checkers, and Steve and I are playing checkers and I
make a bad move, he's going to take my checker and I'm like, Oh, I got feedback and I can
learn from that.
But like what Steve described, even for the experts, you're like, Oh, high danger day.
I can't believe that didn't slide.
And we just threw 20 pounds of Ampho on that and blew the hell out of that slope and it
didn't go.
How was that possible?
Yeah.
You don't get the feedback.
I got another question for you, Steve.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to ask you like what the skiing is like all over the
world.
I mean, you made me think of something and Jeff, you can chime in on this too.
When you go to guide in different places like you mentioned Iceland and Canada and stuff,
obviously those are all going to have just inherently different snow packs.
Is there a bit of a learning curve or do you have to kind of jump back into a different
mindset for each place that you go tour?
Like, what's the process of that?
Yeah, for sure.
And you know, what's interesting and I get asked this all the time, like, Oh, you're
from Colorado.
You guys have great snow and mountains.
Why don't you guide there?
And I'm like, well, because the Avalanche Dragon is real big and nasty in Colorado.
And in Japan, it's like this cute little fur ball.
That's not so big of a deal.
Totally.
A lot of the places that I've chosen to go have much less challenging snow packs than
Colorado does.
They're not notorious for consistently having persistent week layers.
And when they do pop up, it tends to be much more of a big deal.
You know, it's like, Oh my gosh, there's a persistent week layer.
And I'm like, Oh, that's a cute little thing.
It'll probably heal in a couple of days.
It'll be all right.
It's not like what we see in Colorado where it's like, Yep, there's our basal facets.
I guess we'll deal with that for the next five months.
So yeah, and then like three more layers of it.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
But yes, there is, there is a learning curve.
And I've always tried to schedule myself both for my own personal wants and desires that
what I show up somewhere, I like to be able to ski for myself personally, go someplace
I haven't checked out yet, maybe try, you know, a different mountain range or different
place that I haven't seen yet.
But it also gives me a time to assimilate to the snowpack and figure out what's going
on.
You know, and one of the big things we talk about, you know, home or whatever your backyard
is, is you can't just take that snapshot, right?
You can't say, Hey, I'm going to go, I want to go back country skiing next weekend.
So on Friday, I'm going to start looking at the ablanche bulletin.
It's like, no, you got to watch this thing.
You got to track it throughout the season, see what the trends are, see what's happening,
is it improving, is it degrading, you know, what's happening.
So I do the same thing when I'm traveling.
I'm getting ready to head to Iceland.
What's today Monday on, I guess I leave on Thursday, so we better wrap this up so I can
start getting my other important things done before I leave.
But I've been following the weather over there for the past three weeks, you know, paying
attention to what's going on.
I've got some other guide friends who are in the area.
There's a guy I know who does ablanche education all over.
And this is the second year in a row that he's shown up in Iceland two weeks before
I do and starts doing this ablanche stuff and starts posting all these videos online.
And so I make sure to follow him and pay attention because I'm like, great, he's out there digging
pits for me.
Like, why wouldn't I watch this stuff and get this information?
So I'm just inferring it all the time, even when I'm not there to track these trends,
see what's going on.
So when I show up, I'm not just like completely in the dark.
It's kind of the same tactic as here, right?
Like you got to pay attention all the time.
If you're going to a bunch of different places, you got to pay attention, even if I'm going
to go down to the San Juan's in Colorado, if I know I have a trip coming up down there,
I guess they're paying attention to what's happening down there.
Yeah, I've just made a point now of every morning when I wake up, instead of getting
on Instagram, it's like first thing I look at is aspect to have even see like what's
going on and just like try to make that the morning habit to keep track of like over the
time.
Yeah, and it's nice to have that sort of one stop shop clearinghouse like aspect to
have you where you can be like, okay, I just need to look at this one thing.
I don't have to look at, you know, an avalanche bulletin and a weather site and this thing
and that thing.
It's like, I can just look at one resource that tells me the majority of what I want
to know.
It's nice to have that in your pocket.
Highly aggregated.
Totally.
Whatever that means.
I like it better when it puts all the pieces together for me.
That's right.
Jeff, do you got anything else you want to talk to your brother about?
What kind of mood you're in before you cut my hair?
Because sometimes you're a little salty and it gets, I just feel like it's retribution
for our childhood squabbles and like, I don't know how the hair is going to come out and
you're a little bit rough and it's this constant like verbal diarrhea of how it's not going
well and oh geez, I don't know about this.
Maybe we should just shave it all off and you should go for the bald look.
You know what I think it comes down to is how many times in the past week you've bugged
me about cutting your hair.
So you might want to take that into consideration.
It's getting like the wings are coming out.
It's like flaps down.
I understand.
So to me, that means get rid of the wings.
Take it all off.
I got it.
No problem.
I do have one question.
I think it's time for Jeff to do like a proper business mullet.
Oh, oh, interesting.
Okay.
So Steve, both you and I share a very healthy appreciation of the absurd and we often people
get people give us feedback to say, Hey, I can't tell if you're kidding or not.
And we're like, Oh, sorry, I'm kidding.
Most of the time, I imagine there's going to be a bunch of students in the AMGA who are
going to watch this to try to get insights and how to manage you as their examiner on
their their next exam or course.
You got any anything you want to say to those students out there who are trying to game
the system and get an edge?
In regards to how they should deal with me or in regards to how they should deal with
their guiding education.
Do both.
I think the most important thing and what I really try to do and I don't know how I've
gotten this reputation as as being a tough examiner or tough instructor like I'm a fricking
teddy bear.
I'm a f**king teddy bear.
Don't you forget it.
But a lot of people have said after the course that they're like, Oh, wow, like working with
you is actually really awesome.
But I think the most important thing and I wish somebody had told me this before is that
on your guide exams, that's when you need to prove what it is that you can do on your
courses leading up to it.
You're there to learn everything's educational.
Make mistakes.
That's fine.
Don't kill anybody.
But you can make mistakes.
Ask questions.
Ask for clarification.
Try things that you don't know how to do.
If you know how to do these two things and you just keep showing me those two things
repeatedly, I'm gonna be like, Yeah, great, you know how to do those two things.
That's awesome.
Can you do these other seven things?
I don't know.
So I always encourage people like try to take that pressure off of you.
And let us try to impart more knowledge.
Don't try to show me the thing you already know how to do.
Try to show me that you want to learn how to do other things.
I think it's, it's a real succinct quote that says, Are you worried about being right or
getting it right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good one.
And it's tough, you know, a lot of these, you know, whatever outdoor pursuit, mountain
climbing, rock climbing, backcountry skiing, they are centered around somewhat approving
yourself socially more now with social media and everything, but also internally, right?
Like, I think I've finally gotten to the point where I'm pretty comfortable with the
climbing grades that I can handle.
I'm not like, I need to be better.
I've got to push harder.
I'm comfortable being mediocre.
Well, and how long, how long did we spend always trying to do things faster than we
did before?
Right?
Yeah, let's do this.
You know, last time this tour took us four hours and see if we can do it in three.
I'm like, who cares?
You know, it's a sunny day.
I'd rather be out here all day.
Yeah, I think my trip, yeah.
I think one thing I really hard to set that aside in your guide trainings and be like,
yeah, it doesn't matter if I can prove that I can do this one thing or to show how slick
I can be.
Like, try something new, do something different.
I think one thing I try to impart on students is like, hey, listen, for my first couple
courses, I was literally the worst person in the class.
And it's okay.
It's not where you start.
It's where you finish.
And like, how do you integrate the feedback that you get on your course and how can you
be better prepared coming in so that you're like, I've gone through the student handbook
and I know I'm proficient in all these things.
And then the instructors are going to polish it up and help me work on the application
and the terrain as opposed to how do I tie a month or mule?
Oh, shoot.
I guess I should have practiced that before I showed up.
Yeah.
You know, and it's not different than what we were talking about with avalanche education.
Like a lot of people see it as I need to jump through the hoop.
What do I have to do to get through the hoop?
Rather than, you know, how can I better understand the hoop?
I need to understand the entire being of the hoop.
You know, I see it.
I follow these.
I'm not really sure why there's always interesting things on there, but you know, I'm on these
Facebook forums for like backcountry skiing in Colorado and stuff.
You'll see these posts from people who are like, Hey, I've got next Thursday off and
I want to go up to Berthude.
I got a level one.
Anybody want to go?
And people be chiming in like, Yeah, I got my level one too.
Let's go.
And I'm just like, Holy crap.
Like, these people understand the hoop or did they jump through the hoop?
I'm not going to choose my backcountry partner by who's free on Thursday.
But I think that's, you know, I would say that's a positive change that I think I've
seen in the last few years.
Early on in or in the mid, in the middle of my avalanche education teaching career.
You could definitely tell the people that were there to jump the hoop.
You know, they think that if they just sleep in the back of the class, somehow they're
going to get the knowledge that they need and everything will be fine.
And I think now I tend to see people who are more inquisitive and they do want to know
more and they do want to try to understand more.
And then I think, I think they often leave the class being frustrated because they're
like, Okay, you taught me a bunch of things, but I still don't know the answer.
And that's, it's the imperfect math.
There is no answer.
I'm sorry.
I can't tell you.
It doesn't really teach you answers.
It teaches you like how to ask the right questions.
Yeah.
Usually.
And the more questions you're asking should give you the answer that you don't know the
answer.
That's funny.
Oh man, I had something good.
I wanted to ask you as like a wrap up and now it, I lost me.
I was just listening to that.
Sorry to distract you.
Oh, no, it was good.
That was a good point you made.
I was going to, oh, I know what I was going to say.
You know, it sounds like the, just from hanging out with Jeff a lot and just now having conversations
with a bunch of mountain guys, which has been really cool for me.
It seems like the more sort of data you guys all get and the more of these like close calls
and crazy stories you have, it really changes your, your sort of fundamental understanding
of what it means to like play in the back country.
So maybe as like a wrap up or a final thought, like what, what do you think would be a great
maybe like reminder or just like mentality to put people in like to think about before
they go into the back country, like no matter what level they have.
Well, there's kind of the classic that we always say in avalanche education is that
you have goals and objectives.
Your goal is to go out and have fun and come home safe at the end of the day.
Your objective is the thing that you want to ride when you're out there, but your objective
shouldn't change your goal.
Your goal is always to come home safe, right?
I would assume that's true for most people.
Maybe some people have a different opinion of what that ultimate goal is.
So there is that, you know, to think about what you're doing.
And as I've let that formulate my experiences through the years, you know, do I still like
to scan the steep and deep?
Heck yeah, absolutely.
Is there times when I want to go and get rowdy?
Heck yeah, for sure.
But those times have to present themselves to you.
You can't just take it when you want it.
And I've learned that the hard way.
I've had plenty of close calls and I'm like, oh yeah, okay, I can see where my decision
making was clouded by me wanting to ski this line on this day in these conditions or with
this person or whatever it is.
But now I'm much more in favor of, I want to go out and have an enjoyable experience
and I want to have a good time.
I want to make sure that my team comes back safe and that we don't have to do any CPR out
there.
And that we don't have to pull our beacons out, shouldn't have to do that.
And I still have, you know, I love telling students are often blown away by this, especially
around Crested View where they assume that I've skied everything.
And I'm like, no man, I still have a tick list even in my backyard of things that I
haven't skied because it hasn't lined up with the timing, the conditions, the right
partner, you know, all these things that have to fall into place.
Sometimes it just doesn't happen.
And so I haven't been able to go out and ski these things.
And you know, maybe I'll get to them and maybe I won't.
That's just, that's fine.
But I can't go try to jam it in on a day when it's not, not appropriate to be doing that.
Hmm.
Wise words.
I like that.
You really got to wait for the opportunity.
You can't create it.
Correct.
You know.
Hey, so Steve, you've been in the mountains now for about 30 years.
And guiding for most of that.
And you're a senior instructor and examiner for the AMGA and you work with mountain teams
from special ops and run heli operations internationally.
If people want to train with you and bring their level up, you're really top notch coach.
How do they get a hold of you?
No, they can probably not find me on social media.
They could check out my website that I updated.
I think sometime during the pandemic.
Email.
And my website is Steve banks mountain guide.com.
Yeah, my email is Steve at Steve banks mountain guide.com.
So they can find me through either one of those avenues, although Facebook messenger and Instagram
DMs do work.
It might be slower to respond on those.
All right.
So try to throw your info.
You're down below.
All right.
Thanks a lot and really appreciate you coming on and sharing your experiences with us.
And I'm really looking forward to my haircut with Stefano Bonco, my Italian stylist.
We'll see how that works out for you.
Hey, Steve, thanks so much, man.
It's great talking to you.
Hey, good chatting to you guys.
Take care.
Bye.
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