Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

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Radio 4. My car My cast away this week is the climber Conrad Anker. Some of us choose a life in

IT or event planning. Conrad Anker has opted to swing from a nylon step ladder 19,000 feet

up a cliff with a dose of trench fruit and a wedge of stale cheese for supper. It may seem an odd way to spend one's life, but it's his way.

One of the world's elite climbers, he's credited with a long list of first-time ascents.

He's also summited Everest three times. During one renowned climb there, he discovered

the icy corpse of the legendary George Mallory, who'd perished along with Sandy Irvine as they tried

to scale the peak in nothing more than Hobnail Boots and Tweeds back in 1924.

When he isn't exploring the far corners of the world's wilderness, he's at home in Montana with his wife Jenny, the widow of his best friend

Alex Lowe, killed by an avalanche that narrowly missed Conrad himself. He says of his life,

most people are so risk-averse.

The world is full of couch potatoes.

We climbers should get government stipends for keeping the risk-taking gene pool alive. Well there is risk taking and most of us calculate our

risks and then there's the life that you live Conrad Anker. I've seen some of the

film, all of it made my stomach churn of some of the things you tackle.

How much risk is too much by your standards?

Too much risk is when you feel that you can't turn around and you can't control it anymore.

But it is what I love to do and on my days off I go climbing.

I just love that playing with gravity and interaction with rock that's millions and billions of

years old that connection I have with my partners of trust and reliance and I

...