Colorado Film Screenings, My Book, and Training Updates

Come say "hi" in Boulder and Leadville!

Hello friends!

It's been a wild month since my last update as I made three attempts to set the speed record on Mt. Everest. Despite objectively failing in the project, we are already planning for round two in May, 2026.

A few important announcements:

1. I will be in Colorado on June 26, 27, and 28 hosting a run, live Q&A, and film screenings of the short movie on which this book is based. It's free and details are below:

Thurs, June 26, 6:30pm - La Sportiva Store, 2100 Broadway, Boulder, CO - Limited space, reserve your FREE ticket here.

Friday, June 27, 5:30pm - Location TBA

2. "Ty's Training: Talking with my Dad" will be back next week for Season 2! We've had such a positive response and I can't wait to continue sharing the training journey towards some huge projects in the summer and fall.

If you're not already subscribed, please subscribe, like, comment, etc on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

3. You can still Pre-Order my Book - 9 Hours on Manaslu! In case you missed it, I've been writing a book about my journey to the world record on Manaslu last year. We're planning to have the book finished by the end of the summer and you can pre-order it now (along with some other cool packages!)

Pre-order the book!

Note: When you pre-order, you'll get bi-weekly updates, including a pre-published sample from the book each week. I've included one at the bottom of this email as a teaser.

That's all for now.

Love,

Ty

The segment I'm sharing this week is from the first chapter of the book (after the cold open), which I wrote somewhat ironically and tongue-and-cheek as a way to share some of my backstory while also recognizing the tired tropes of the standard athlete memoir. As always, please feel free to share any notes, suggestions, and of course if you find any typos!

Q. Listen, the book is great, but it’s missing something. We need the backstory, the introduction.

Ty. What do you mean? We’ve got that. There’s more than a year of backstory in here!

Q. No, I mean the real backstory of YOU, as a person, not just as an athlete this past year. The reader needs to get to know you a bit so they can empathize, care about you for the rest of the book.

Ty. Oh no, you’re not talking about the whole “I was born to loving parents in May of 1990, etc. etc.” I hate that part of the book. The readers want the good stuff! They want to come to the mountains with me.

Q. That may be so, but they’ll have a greater appreciation for everything you do in Nepal if they understand where you came from. Let’s just try this. Let’s talk it through and if you hate it, we won’t include it. Tell me this: What’s your earliest memory?

Ty. Oh, gosh. Well, my brother saved my life by pushing me down the stairs.

Q. See that sounds like a pretty interesting story, yeah? Go on.

Ty. It’s January of 1997. I’m in Ms. Hurley’s first grade at Thoreau School in Concord, MA, and we’re on winter break. It’s Sunday, almost lunch time and my brother and I are racing up the stairs from our basement. He’s older and bigger than me and -- as boys are prone to do -- he shoves me (accidentally or not, who knows) in the race to lunch and I slide down the stairs. I’m lying there, probably crying because, you know, I’m six, and rolling around on the hideous orange carpet that defined the basement, and eventually my parents come down to figure out what’s going on. Turns out I’m fine -- naturally -- but I have a weird rash, not a bruise, but a bunch of tiny red dots on my face where my brother had hit me.

My parents had noticed this same rash a few times in the previous couple weeks, but this is the first time it pops up immediately after rough-housing. Interestingly enough, my mother, always the observant one, immediately thinks: “It’s leukemia.” I didn’t learn this until years later, but apparently she saw this weird non-bruising-bruise as a sure sign of leukemia and I think that must have fueled the panic that forced them to take me to get checked out that day.

They take me to the pediatrician for what will be the beginning of a long and confusing saga of blood tests, hospital transfer, mis-diagnoses, and finally, several days later, an unfortunate diagnosis of a rare blood disease called Aplastic Anemia.

Q. What is that?

Ty. I could read and summarize the wikipedia page, but, my understanding is that your bone marrow completely shuts down and stops producing new blood cells, which, it turns out, is a pretty big problem.

Again, I’m six here, so I don’t really understand the gravity of the situation. What I do know is that I’ve gone from a great day of wrestling with my older brother to lots of needles and tubes poking out of me in a very short amount of time.

Q. Was your mother right then? It sounds kind of like leukemia?

Ty. Kind of. Leukemia is pretty much the opposite: Your body is making too many cells, out-of-control growth like cancer. Aplastic anemia means your body almost completely shuts down new cell production. And -- though I obviously didn’t know this at the time -- Aplastic Anemia has significantly worse survival rates and, because it is much more rare, has a lot less research about how to treat it, especially back in 1997.

Q. So, what was the rash from the fateful shove?

Ty. Right, the rash. It was something called petechiae, which is a manifestation of extremely low platelet counts; the shove led to the petechiae, which led to the pediatrician, which eventually led to Mass General Hospital.

Q. What else do you remember?

Ty. It’s funny because I see everything through the lens of a six-year-old. So my memories aren’t about existential dread or fear of death, but, like, I remember throwing a fit because I was going to have to spend a night in the hospital and I couldn't bring all my stuffed animals. And then I remember being on the long-term impatient floor at MGH and being super stoked that I had a Nintendo in my room (which, my parents would never let me have a Nintendo at home). I remember making pizza bagels with Donna and Larry, my godparents, who came to visit. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night to have my blood drawn. I remember the outrageous pain of getting a bone-marrow biopsy.

But, honestly, I don’t remember feeling scared. You’re so passive at that age that it was just like, ok, this is my life now.

Q. How long were you in the hospital?

Ty. It was about six weeks. I spent that time living on the impatient floor with a lot of very, very sick kids. Though, again, I had no concept of how sick they were or how sick I was. In my mind, one of my earliest roommates at MGH was this kid named Anthony who was Italian, from Italy, and, in my foggy memory, Anthony had a broken leg. There’s no way this is actually true because, I mean, why would a kid with a broken leg from Italy be on the inpatient cancer floor in Boston? But that’s how my six-year-old brain recorded things.

I honestly don’t remember that much else about it. Again, so much of this is just my memory of my own memory. Like, ‘am I actually remembering all this or is it just that I’ve told (and been told) all these stories so many times that I’m remembering the memory of them?’ if that makes sense.

But, so, I’m inpatient for six weeks and at some point I get discharged and they send me back to my parents’ home and I remember still being very sick at that point.

I had a “central line” which is a very clinical euphemism for “semi-permanent tube running into your chest.” My strongest recollection from this time is the tremendously uncomfortable process of my parents cleaning the insertion point where the tube went in and changing the bandages. I also remember being on some very heavy duty chemotherapy drugs that made my face balloon up. You can see it in old photos from that time.

Q. How long did all this go on? I assume you weren’t in school yet, right?

Ty. School was not an option because I was extremely immunocompromised from the chemo. After a few months, I did have a teacher from my school come to my house so that I could finish first grade. I remember we had a little terrarium where we watched caterpillars construct their cocoons and turn to butterflies.

In retrospect, I was tremendously lucky. Remember, this was almost 30 years ago and Aplastic Anemia was not a well-understood disease. I just happened to be born into a place with some of the best medical research in the world (Boston) and responded well to what was then an experimental treatment. By September, I was back at Thoreau School raising hell.

Q. So in 8 months you went from death’s doorstep to fully cured?

Ty. “Cured” is an odd word here because technically, even today, I’m still not cured; I’m “in remission.” That said, there’s a massive decay of likelihood of the disease coming back after every year of remission, so it’s not something I really think about now. At the time, though, I got my blood tested almost every week that first year or two, and I know that every single draw provoked some serious anxiety in my parents until the results came in.

Q. And so how do you think this affected you going forward?

Ty. I’ve thought a lot about that question. I think the most obvious impact showed up in my relationship with my family. I can play armchair psychologist for a second and zoom out and here’s what I see: I see the younger sibling gets super sick, the older sibling feels isolated and rejected from lack of attention, this creates a tension between those two that won’t be resolved for another decade (or, few decades).

Then, I see the parents: I see two people, not much older than I am now, almost lose their child and, certainly my mother, react perfectly naturally by swinging the pendulum towards protection at all cost.