Ep. 1151: Dr Matt Harmody, The 50 High Points in the USA
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mountaineering: Matt Harmody's Kidney Donation Journey and Team Quest to Summit All 50 U.S. State High Points.
Matt Harmody was part of a team of living kidney donors who set out to summit the high points in all 50 states to illustrate that kidney donors go not not only to live normal lives, but can accomplish amazing feats. Matt shares his personal story beginning in 1980 when his father was diagnosed with renal failure, leading to a long journey of dialysis treatment. He discusses the emotional and physical toll of this experience on his family and the challenges faced during the nine years of treatment. This led Matt to becoming a kidney donor later in life. Great adventure. Great reason.
Learn more at:
https://www.kidneyregistry.com/
The book: Ascending America - https://a.co/d/cXfZoVB
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My personal story actually starts back in 1980. |
| 0:10.0 | I was a college student. |
| 0:12.0 | I got a dreaded call for my mom as I was away at school. |
| 0:15.0 | It's gone to the Cleveland Clinic. |
| 0:17.0 | Right there, that tells you something. |
| 0:19.0 | It would take an act of Congress to drag |
| 0:21.5 | my father to a hospital. He was found to be in renal failure, so that means his kidney |
| 0:28.1 | stopped working and he was put on emergent dialysis. Not been put on dialysis, the toxins |
| 0:35.0 | would have built up to a dangerous level. But that started his journey for about nine years of being on dialysis, the toxins would have built up to a dangerous level. But that started his journey for |
| 0:38.8 | about nine years of being on dialysis. You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast. We talk |
| 0:45.7 | with adventures from around the globe to give you the inspiration you need to get started in the |
| 0:50.7 | outdoors or keep moving if you're already there. Now here's your host, Kurt |
| 0:54.7 | Linville. Happy Monday, everybody. Today's episode is going to be very interesting and very |
| 1:01.9 | inspirational. It is about a team of people that climbed to the highest point in each of the |
| 1:08.0 | 50 states, and they did so in record time, it's a very interesting attempt, |
| 1:14.2 | but there's a catch. |
| 1:16.6 | They were people that had donated a kidney. |
| 1:20.5 | So they did this to show that people can live normal active lives after being a kidney donor |
| 1:26.8 | and to bring more attention toward what it means after being a kidney donor and to bring more attention toward |
| 1:29.2 | what it means to be a kidney donor to help other people. I just think it's super cool. |
| 1:35.2 | Before we dive into that, I wanted to give you a short update on the Kilimanjaro project |
| 1:41.3 | where we are raising $20,000 to give to We See Hope, which is an organization that helps |
... |
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