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>> So, do you think walking up the driveway to collect the mail is hard?

Try climbing the seven highest mountains on the world's seven continents.

That's just what former UW football player Mark Pattison did and he's here to tell his story.

Setting big goals is part of the discussion next, on Northwest Now.

[ Music ] Mark Pattison was a standout wide receiver at Roosevelt High School back in the late '70s.

That led to a scholarship at the University of Washington, where he played under Don James and went on to a brief NFL career with the Raiders, Rams, and Saints.

But his latest accomplishment puts him on a short list of explorers and mountain climbers who have done the seven summits; climbing the highest peaks on each of the world's seven continents.

The last big climb was Mount Everest, which he completed in May of 2021.

Let's start with the bio of a local guy, and I want to establish that you are from here, talk a little bit about where you grew up and what your experience was here in western Washington.

>> I love western Washington, I love Seattle and it was a great place to grow up.

You know, it was back, by the University of Washington, it's obviously been a number of years now, but you know, back in the day when it wasn't so entrepreneurial, really the big show in town was Boeing, right?

And that was it.

And I lived a very simple life.

My mom and dad were both school teachers, wonderful people.

And I spent pretty much all of my hours I can think of at the playgrounds of Laurelhurst and View Ridge field.

I went to the big high school, Roosevelt, it was a big city school up there.

And you know, it was just wonderful.

But in terms of weather and everything else, I think it really helped me prepare for years down the road.

Today we're sitting here in the studio and outside it's raining and it's dark, it's cloudy.

I didn't really know ay difference, other than that's just the whole, the way the whole world, you know, worked and maybe for you know, a month or so during the summer, it would get sunny, but you know, being outside in t-shirts and having that rain come down and learning how to catch the ball and play in the mud, was just part of life.

It was growing up and it was awesome.

>> Same here, shooting baskets out in Maple Valley, I grew up the same way.

My dad was a Roosevelt graduate actually and but you and I are in the same year, 1980, showing up at college.

Me down here at PLU, you up at the University of Washington to play Husky football and you say that you were unequipped to be a D1 college football player.

Why and how did you adapt?

>> Well, you never know until you actually get some place right?

And I had the very good fortune of playing with some really good players in high school and things went well for me.

But I'd really never worked at it, you know?

It's so much different now with select sports and they have all these organized things going on and back then it was just, you know, kind of show up and a lot of us, especially on the guys side, you rotated through bit three sports; football, basketball, and baseball, right?

And you went from season to season.

At that same time, starting in 1975 or '76, Don James had come to the University of Washington and at that time, if I would have said those words back in the day, nobody would have really associated that with a Hall of Fame coach because he hadn't got there yet, right?

And then they start this role, starting in 1977, with Warren Moon, they go to the Rose Bowl in '78, and then for the next 10 years, they went to a bowl every single year.

And I'm happy to be reading this book by one of my, one of Coach James's assistant coaches, Skip Hall, and he called that the camelot years, right?

And I happen to be there right in the thick of the camelot years.

>> We all see it that way.

>> Yeah, and it was amazing.

And it really, you know, so I show up the first day of practice and I'm 181 pounds, I'm 6 foot 2, I can't bench my weight.

And I'm looking at all these guys that he had now, now this is 5 years later after he'd come, had been developing these different players.

They were big, they were strong, they were physical, and I was just looking at myself like, I cannot compete with those guys.

I didn't have the body, I didn't have the framework, I didn't have the mental, you know, the body, soul, mind, you know, all that working together and so it really took me a number of years to develop and implement Don James's blueprint for life.

>> And John Wooden's, in the Pyramid for Success, right?

>> John Wooden's Pyramid of Success, which he took and applied it and adapted which are essentially 25 different individual and team goals, which helped somebody achieve whatever success they're looking to do.

And so for us, back in the day, it was winning at the Pac-10, it's now the Pac-12, and going to the Rose Bowl and winning the game down there.

And so, it really showed the course of individual and team things that you had to do to get you to that place and it took me, you know, a good 3 years before I even saw the light at the end of the tail.

And the thing that, the whole key for me was that I got into it and it was a little bit if blind faith because, just because you do A, B, and C, get bigger, faster, and stronger, doesn't mean that you're ever going to start, you're going to see any time on the field.

But it puts you in the best position to win on the field.

>> Yep, what's the best thing you can do today?

>> Yes.

>> Yep.

Take a little sidetrack into football, a lot of this is going to be about your phase two, the second chapter as a mountain climber and explorer, but what is your analysis of UW football?

You know, Peterson, you know, I felt like the program was, the airplane was taking off and now no, it's definitely in a decline here for a bit.

What's your analysis?

Is it the weather, is it the fact we're in the corner of the country and we can't recruit?

What's the problem?

>> Well, no to me it's really simple, and I was talking about this when it first happened and you know, Coach Jim Lambright was a legend in terms of coaching at the University of Washington for many years and there was a point in time where Coach James had left the program and then Don, or Jim Lambright stepped into that position.

Same type of deal, defensive coordinator and steps in, he'd never been a head coach.

He'd been coaching for 30 years, was at the University of Washington as a player, as a coach, had a very successful run with Coach James.

And now Coach James decided to leave, now it's like his turn, right?

And I just think there's certain colleges that are out there at the D1 top power five schools that you can't take somebody, without having any head coaching experience.

I mean you'd never take somebody and just all of a sudden make them CEO of a big company.

And that's essentially what the University of Washington or UCLA or Stanford or these other schools, they're all about.

Game strategy, how to manage the different players-- >> Recruiting.

>> -- recruiting, upper campus, right?

All the different alumni that you're interacting with and it's a skillset-- >> His constituency.

>> Yes.

Yes, and so to me, again, taking Jimmy Lake out of the picture, just in general, you need to conduct a national search and find out who the best candidate out there, the most qualified guy or girl, and whoever that is, is going to be your next coach.

And we didn't do that.

>> You are a member of the NFL Alumni Association, and you know, one of the big issues in football has been CTE.

Have you had any exposure to that issue?

What is your thinking about it?

And I don't know if you have kids or not, but what do you tell young people about playing?

>> Well, I love the game of football and I think they're doing everything they possibly can to really try to make the game safer.

Certainly if you look at the NFL level and even the college, you know, really protecting the quarterback, you're seeing a lot more points being scored these days.

You know, look, back in the day I never once heard of a concussion.

We got dinged.

>> Yeah.

Got your bell rung.

>> And then you got your bell rung.

And then get your butt back in the game.

And that's what it was.

>> Yeah.

>> And so they've come so far of coming out of the denial that it doesn't, you know, that people actually have brain trauma.

There's been some tragic stories with many famous NFL players and it's just great to see this thing kind of on track, you know?

The NFL Players Association won this massive lawsuit and I was part of that, but at the end of the day, you know, you have to be fairly damaged in terms of your cognitive skills that you're not, that you're going to get awarded, and so for me, you know, I'm not looking for anything.

I don't know if my, and I've been knocked out several times, and I don't know if my brain is functioning the way it's supposed to be functioning.

>> Ask your wife, she'll tell you.

>> Yeah, but yeah, my gal, she'll yeah, she reminds me of things frequently, so maybe she's the marker of that.

But I think just in general they're making great gains.

>> Can the game ever be made safe though?

>> I don't know, I don't, probably not.

You know, just because and you see this a lot on you know, on the replay, like Monday night football and you're sitting there and you're watching and they slow things down and just body reaction, when somebody's coming up and you're about to get hit, and you lower yourself, right, just to absorb that hit, the other guy, the defensive guy's going to come down and lower-- >> Trying to get lower.

>> Try to get lower, right?

And sometimes heads collide, that's just what happens, right?

In addition, they've, they have made the foam in the helmets thicker and safer, yet the, like the shoulder pads and the pads you wear on your legs and knees have all reduced, right?

So it's just offsetting one for the other.

>> I don't want to belabor this one, just a quick hit, quick hot take on Aaron Rodgers.

How do you think he handled this situation and did he get a little favoritism, a little special treatment do you think?

>> Yeah, I mean look, I don't hold any judgment against people who are not vaxxed and I'm double vaxxed, I needed to do that before I went over to Nepal, and go climb Mount Everest.

That was important to me.

And you know, I just don't get it and I'm not here to create judgment on people who aren't vaxxed and I'm not here to you know, take a side one way or the other, but I do think that when you're in a position where you're around a lot of people, especially in a contact sport, that the NFL's require that everybody out there is vaxxed or you got to take these other protocols, that it's just a requirement of what the deal is.

Or you end up like the coach at Washington State, who just got let go because he was not double vaxxed and he's around all these kids.

>> Yeah.

You played with the Rams, you played with the Saints, but you really have a strong tie and a connection with the Raiders.

Talk a little bit about how they treat you, briefly, and your relationship with that particular team.

>> I mean it's amazing but that's who I got drafted by back in 1985, I was in the seventh round and you know, when I got down there just to start, most of the team were the same guys that were coming off the 1983 Super Bowl win against the, now Washington Redskins, Washington football team, right?

And you know, so I'm in the huddle and there's Jim Plunkett and there's Marcus Allen and there's Todd Christensen, and you know, there's all these famous guys and we break the huddle and we go to the line of scrimmage and you've got Lester Hayes pacing me back and forth, and got Howie Long and Matt Millen and you know, just all these legends.

And I found myself like God, if I ever died and went to heaven, this is what it would be like.

And fast forward the clock through now in Las Vegas, we were talking about that earlier, and you know, not only have they made a brick for me outside the stadium, and I was never a super star player by any means, but they decided to honor me and 102 other players, I would call Raider greats, with plaques in the cement outside Allegiant Stadium, and they have such a strong alumni, they keep bringing us down and they really understand about paying if forward and so you know, paying for our flights, bringing us in, putting us up at the Raider Hotel, showing us around.

And everybody feeling the love and equal.

>> Yeah, and you're doing outreach in community for them.

That's part of your role.

>> That is part of the role, yeah.

And so it's just you know, like any place you go, it's always wonderful to feel loved and liked and you feel that from the Raiders and you feel that from the Raider, former Raider players.

>> You had your NFL career, you spun out of that looking for something new.

Unfortunately went through a little bit of a tough time with the divorce, how did that affect you, change your life, and what quest did that set you on?

>> Well that's a great question, and so not, this was all about 10 years ago and you know, when you get out of football you go off the cliff, you pick yourself up and you know, I was doing what most of the guys were doing, which is you start to put the family together and I'm starting my work career and 10 years ago things started to go off the rails and not only was I going through that tough time, but my dad also suddenly died of a massive stroke.

And so trying to put all that together and I was really in this place of being in quicksand, and it seemed like it went on for a couple years and for me it's just not a good place to be because I'm always kind of moving forward and [inaudible] and I just wasn't moving forward in anything.

And so I decided to find out if any NFL player had ever climbed the seven summits, the highest peaks on every continent, seven continents.

And it turned out that there hadn't been and so I said, I'm going to be that guy.

And that really put me on this path, so it literally took me 9 years to climb seven mountains, two of them I was on twice.

But you know, what a journey and talk about redirecting your energy and focus on something new and something that's going to pull you up and something that's going to be exciting, something that you don't know anything.

So talk about stepping into the fear.

I had to go through all those things to really help emerge myself out and then what happened, the ironic thing, is by being in the mountains and being in the you know, running up and down Tiger Mountain and Mount Si and Mount Rainier and these other places in the great northwest I found my healing, I found my peace.

Which really helped me just you know, in life.

Because you shed all that negative weight and then you rise up one day and you know, I'm in this great spot today.

>> Logically it makes sense that you did your training, you did your knowledge work, you climbed six summits on six continents and saved the big momma for last.

>> Yeah.

>> Mount Everest.

You also added, how do you pronounce it?

Is it Lut-see [phonetic]?

>> Lhotse.

>> Lhotse, you added Lhotse to this to make your goal even bigger.

What, why did you make that decision?

Why was that your goal?

And how did Everest compare to the other climbs?

>> Well, it's, Mount Everest is exponentially harder than anything on the planet I've ever been on.

Yeah, I mean it's way taller and it's way harder and just going through the Khumbu Icefall and you have to spend 2 months, 2 months of suffering.

Like Denali is like number two, but you're up there for 3 weeks and if you're lucky enough to get through the weather that comes off the Bering Sea, awesome, but it's very difficult and challenging in that way.

But you know, when you go on a 29,035 feet, it's a whole different animal.

Two-thousand-twenty, my whole goal originally was to climb a mountain once a year, one of these big mountains around the world.

And I was supposed to climb Mount Everest in 2020 and then back in March of 2020, if we kind of rewind the clock, COVID lands, right?

And affects the planet.

And so the planet ends up shutting down and so everything got pushed out and you know, I would have to tell you, you know, it was disappointing and it was just like, I'd trained so hard for this event.

>> Yeah, and you're trying to peak at the right time.

>> You're trying to peak at the right time, metaphorically speaking and this Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world wasn't even on the radar.

And by the way, for people who don't know, Lhotse, if Mount Everest is here, there's a, up at 26,500 feet, there's a saddle and then on the other side of the saddle is Lhotse, right, so it's doable, you can do both.

And so when I had to reset my goal, reset my sights, and we said okay, we're going to push this thing out to 2021 and I said, I need to double down on my goal and not only that, my daughter, Amelia, has been going through her fight with epilepsy the last 15-16 years, and so I said you know, I'm going to pair myself with an organization, Higher Ground, and I'm going to see what I can do about raising money and we're going to call this, this Lhotse challenge, Amelia's Everest, and I'm going to go after that.

So the idea was climb up to Camp 4, 26,500 feet, climb Everest, come back down, sleep.

Go in your tent for 4 hours, wake up 4 hours later and go back Lhotse and then come back down.

And there's a lot of things that went down that that did not happen.

But that was the goal.

>> Talk a little bit about COVID and the role that played.

I mean you, I, you were very lucky to kind of slide in through the window and be able to get this done, right?

And there was even an outbreak up there at base camp while you were altitude conditioning.

Talk a little bit about that, you just made it through a narrow window.

>> Well look, 400 people, 400 climbers were up there from all over the world.

And only 120 of us made it.

Of our expedition party, we started with 24 and we ended up only 10 of us made it, right?

And we were flying people off left and right with COVID conditions, with lung fluids in their lungs condition, and you know, we were just looking around like who's going to be next?

And the whole thing that we did a great job, is number one, be vaxxed, so that was the big thing.

Number two is I was over the top in terms of cleanliness, right?

Always washing the hands, wearing the mask, doing all that kind of stuff.

And then number three, and this was news to me, which is up at Everest Base Camp, at 17,500 feet, you've got all these expeditions that are spread out over about a mile.

>> It's a traffic jam.

>> Well not, it's not a traffic jam, that's just where we all set their tents and our base camp and you know, you set forth from there and you come back down and you go a little higher and you come back down and you go a little bit higher and you come back and in the past, many of these different expedition parties, they know each other.

The sherpas all know each other and so there's a lot of mix and matching and hey, come on over, we'll have some drinks, you know, tonight type of thing.

And that did not happen.

And we stayed really isolated, in our own little bubble to make sure that we wouldn't have any potential you know, COVID cases come into our camp and we didn't.

>> You're losing weight as you ascend, you lose partial vision or lose vision in one eye, the conditions though, favor you and you summit Everest and then things start going south on your way down.

>> Yeah, well things were going south when I got out of my tent.

Things were going south 3 days before this whole thing.

I was on a 45 degree slope in a cyclone, stuck in my tent for 3 days.

It sucked, right?

And one of the things that, and this really affected me, that I just don't do well at is freeze-dried food.

To me it's taking hot water and pouring it on sawdust and eating it, right?

And my system would just, you know, it would come right back up.

And so we're in this tent for 3 days, we already started, this is now on the 15th, or early morning of the 15th, started from 15,500.

We've now, on the 20th, we're stuck at this 45 degree Camp 3 on the Lhotse phase, and then we finally make it up to the top camp, at 26,500 feet; Camp 4, and now we're ready to go at, on the 23rd of May.

And I got out of my tent, I didn't put on the right kind of eyewear and we had a really strong, 45 degree, mile per hour, wind coming with all these small ice particles.

It sliced my eye, so I literally could not see out of my left eye.

And I had no energy, and I'm telling you, this thing is straight up and it never lets up.

It is straight up, straight up, straight up.

And so I was just so out of energy.

There was no elation when I got to the top and I wish, I look back on it and say could I redo the day, could I have a Domino's pizza delivered to Camp 4?

And obviously that wasn't possible but you know, I would have been so much better with my strength and just moving up the mountain.

I did so well the entire time, except for that day.

But I did get to the top.

I was probably the last guy to get up there, and then everybody clears off the maintain.

And now I'm up there and now my sherpa leaves me and now I run out of oxygen and I've got one eye and that's where I decided like, you know what, at this point in time, I've got my dear loved ones, my gal I'm with, Darcy, my two daughters and my friends, my family, you know, just like it doesn't matter about records and about Lhotse.

I just got to figure out how I can get from here, back down to that camp.

>> So you made the decision about Lhotse, not once you got back down and decided not to go, you made it at the summit of Everest.

>> I made it at 17,500 on a place called the Balcony.

And yeah, you're looking down on the world, right?

I mean I can see everything and it just happened that one day, just that one day, there was a window of sun that had come out.

Before then, we were dealing with the jet stream that was sitting on top of the mountain there at 26,500 all the way up.

You know, just crazy winds and snow and everything else.

And it cleared up and then the next day it shut back down again.

>> Goal setters, hard chargers, somebody trying to change their life, somebody who's worked for 7 years to do something.

What made you say no, and I think, do the right thing for your friends and family?

>> You know, first of all it's just like, I've never been stripped so far back where you're at the edge of life, right?

I mean I've put myself in a lot of hard situations, I mean two-a-days aren't fun.

You know, it's very physical and it's mental in many different ways, but you're not going to end your life, right?

And so, coming down it just, like the angels were around me and it just kept coming back over and over and over again like, what's more important?

What's the most important thing?

Is it Lhotse or is it my, the people that love me and I love them, right?

And that's the thing that really kept like jumping out is like, this is a no-brainer.

>> Some people don't listen to that voice.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, and there's a lot of bodies in the mountains to prove it.

>> Well, I'll tell you, I mean, to your point; in 2019 I was in Antarctica and my tent mate for 3 weeks was a guy named Don Cash.

And he didn't really have that voice and he was a wonderful guy, he was a wonderful family man, but he decided to continue to go from Antarctica in January and then later in that same your, in March in 2019, go to Mount Everest.

He went with a very inexperienced, cheap, outfitter and took him 18 hours one way to get to the top, raised his hand and fell over.

I stepped over him on my way [inaudible] Hilary Step, going to the summit.

>> Oh gosh.

>> Yeah.

>> Rough game.

>> Yeah.

>> Let's wrap you here in our last 2 minutes with what you're doing now.

I know you're raising money, what's next for you?

Give us the wrap up.

>> Well my day to day job, so you know, people have said hey Mark, you know, it's great that you just had this movie that came out that the NFL produced called, Searching for the Summit.

It's on YouTube, anybody can which that.

It's a wonderful 30 minute documentary on this whole Everest journey.

I'm an executive for Sports Illustrated, that's how I actually monetize my life.

I don't, I'm not a movie star, right?

>> Monetizing your life, I love that.

>> Yeah, well that's, I mean I have to work like everybody else, right?

So that's how I you know, I make money enough to go off and do these adventures.

I continue to raise money, tonight actually I'm headed over to, or tomorrow night, I'm headed over to Bainbridge Island, we're having a big showing at a place called the Lynwood Theatre, 7:00 pm, and 100% of all the proceeds are going to Higher Ground, nonprofit in Sun Valley.

And then in terms of what's next, I'm headed down to Ecuador in December and I've got a 60th birthday that's coming up, so you must have a birthday around the corner somewhere.

>> Yes, I guess I outed myself earlier, didn't I, yeah.

>> So myself and Darcy are going down to Ecuador and I'm going to climb a mountain called Cotopaxi and it's 20,000 feet, and the goal is on the 13th, which is my birthday, I'll be standing on top, probably 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning, and I will drop down and do 60 pushups just to say I still got it and keep charging.

>> And if you can do all that, I will say you do still got it.

Great.

Well Mark, thanks so much for coming to Northwest Now.

Very interesting conversation and a lot to be said there about goal setting and achieving things and making decisions and I think you have a lot to say to people in terms of informing their lives.

And about, I would say too, about second acts, which is always hard.

>> I think that's a big key to everything is constantly looking to pivot, which I had to do.

I've had to do two or three times, and reinvent yourself, right?

And you can only do that if you truly, you know, step in the fear and go do things you've never done before.

>> Mark, thanks for coming to Northwest Now.

>> Thank you so much.

>> You bet.

One of the things I really like about this story the most is that Pattison decided not to try a second mountain right after his Everest climb because he had responsibilities at home.

The bottom line; nothing makes me crazier than people taking extreme risks without life insurance or any real financial consideration for those they leave behind and who then pop up on Go Fund Me, asking for money to pay for their significant other's stupidity.

Good on Mark for saying no to that when he thought the risks were too great.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

To watch this program again or to share it with others, Northwest Now can be found on the web at kbtc.org and be sure to follow us on Twitter @NorthwestNow.

Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest Now, until next time, I'm Tom Layson, thanks for watching.

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