Tayson: Hey everybody welcome back to the Live Ultralight podcast powered by after vitals um this podcast is about inspiring you to get outdoors showing you how to lighten your pack and build your confidence that you can live a life full of adventure today we have a very special guest which i'm going to do an introduction on right now his name is ray zahab he's a canadian explorer long distance runner author speaker and founder of a non-profit organization impossible to possible in 2015 he was awarded the meritorious service cross a decoration awarded to those who have demonstrated an outstanding level of service or set an exemplary standard of achievement to benefit or honor canada in 2009 ray was a part of a trio that broke the world's speed record for an unsupported expedition to the geographic south.
Tayson: Pole he was the first to run across the atacama desert the driest desert in the world and famously in 2007 he was a part of an ultra running trio that crossed the sahara desert in 111 days as a documentary as documented in the film running the sahara his accomplishments are many and the list goes on and on according to his website he's journeyed over 17 000 kilometers and for those of you in the u.s over 10 500 miles on his expeditions around the world clearly ray likes to push the limits and uh we're very honored to have you on here ray i'm really excited to have you how are you doing today.
Ray: I'm doing great thank you so much for that intro i mean that was like pretty accurate i gotta say i mean the only thing i'm starting to push the i'm starting to push the ten thousand mile i'm i'm you know i gotta update that i suppose at some point but uh i'm starting to get a little bit more up there in the mileage but you know it's uh it's so great to be here with you and i've been following you on social media and enjoying all your posts and uh that's been absolutely fantastic so i actually get to talk to you is a lot of fun so i'm stoked.
Tayson: Well the pleasure's mine and uh i mean i don't think that mileage i don't know if it does or doesn't probably doesn't even include the training that you do every day as well right.
Ray: Oh god no that's just equals and you know what it'll probably be like four times as much it only includes certain expeditions i don't even have all of my trips in that number i don't even know why i you know what it was a random thing that my daughters asked me one day you know daddy how far have you ran on your expeditions and i said well there was this there was that there and by the time i added it up like i was around 17 but i gotta tell you i'm sure it's well over twenty thousand kilometers i'm gonna someday you know what i'm gonna do that this weekend i'm gonna sit down and add up every single kilometer this weekend so if you see me update my instagram thing you're gonna know it's. Because of because of your you know inspiration that i updated it so there.
Tayson: You go i've got a new goal for you then i just googled it it says that it's about 24 901 miles to go around the world so that's a threshold you can you can aim for here in the near future you want.
Ray: Yeah exactly exactly you want to know something people have ran around the world i mean that's an amazing thought right i mean it's it's happened people have done it and you know through history so uh you know in exploration history so i think i find that there was like rand walked whatever um it's pretty neat pretty neat but um so you just completed your first uh ultra which is amazing.
Tayson: Right yeah i'm uh i i'm like a very early on runner i guess you could say i started running about a year and a half ago uh previously i had never ran i mean i was like uh in football i played on you know on the line um in high school and college i threw track you know i was a thrower and track and so um i was the opposite of a runner and i'm pretty sure i had only really ran about a mile at a time um through my whole life until about a year and a half ago so i i still have a ton to learn and i'm i probably got the the worst genetics and body size for for this uh to run so when i see the stuff that you do.
Tayson: It's like i i can't even i can't even equate but but i think that's what i've loved actually about getting into some of this running aspect is i draw a lot of inspiration from guys like you that go out and do these just incredibly hard things um in fact we were on a hike as a 110 mile hike through the Uinta through the uintas and uh i just had one of those low points where like i my stomach was really upset i was really low on calories and a little low on hydration and we had to climb this big pass and i just kind of tucked in behind someone on our in our group and i just thought about guys like you and i and i just drew a lot of strength from that i'm.
Tayson: Like those guys push themselves so hard i can't i can't even begin to complain right now like just push right and and uh i just i find a lot of inspiration in the stuff that you do i mean in that intro we named just a fraction like like you already alluded to of the stuff that you've you've done in your in your past and i think a very maybe a very interesting starting point is that i read in your backstory that used to smoke a pack a day and didn't consider yourself healthy at all and i mean what what changed you to go from maybe that lifestyle to this crazy fit active lifestyle that you live now doing all these exhibitions around the.
Ray: World well you know what it's it's a really good it's a good question and you know i had a similar conversation with someone earlier today a friend of mine and i said you know you really don't know you feel like until you actually feel good one day or you experience what feeling good can feel like and then you realize wow i felt shitty for a really long time right and these things become very relative as well i want to back up just before i get into this and say you know when you're on that hike that you were on and you're you're burying yourself and you're giving it everything you've got you know the most challenging things i've said this many times before the most challenging things we do are very relative to us as.
Ray: Individuals and so like when we do extraordinary things in our lives or exceptional things in our lives it really comes down to how we're feeling in the moment like people have asked me a million times what was it like what did you feel like when you reached the edge of the red sea after 4 500 miles and 111 days of running across the sahara and i always say you know what it was exactly the same as my first basically five mile run that i was able to do around my like you know my neighborhood where i live in quebec i was able to run five miles and not take a walking break when i was doing my early running training and i remember that day and how empowering that felt and finishing the sahara really.
Ray: Truthfully felt about the same effect look at those same emotions so it's just relative different touch points throughout my own career or through whatever anyone else is doing but to go back to the the question yeah i was smoking a pack a day i mean you know drinking way too much um you know living a lifestyle that now i mean you know obviously i look back and i'm like oh my god but when i was younger i had a lot of fun doing it it's just that i was a mess right and i didn't i didn't really i think deep down inside i didn't really believe in myself or that i could do things and so instead i you know i did these other things that i knew i was good at like partying and.
Ray: Whatever else but you know i had a great i had a great childhood i lived on a on a small farm and we had horses and and dogs and rabbits and all sorts of things and you know my brother and i were outside all the time when we were younger um you know and you move around on your feet when you're living in the country because the nearest kids are 25 acres away across a hay field you know your nearest friends to play with so you run over there but you never think about it right and then you know you end up in high school and you just i you know i sort of fell through the cracks there and then you know barely got out of high school did not complete my community college.
Ray: Courses and i just sort of would just felt that i really had no passion and no direction in my life and my brother had transitioned his life in his late 20s to become this guy who was he was he was a trainer he was like a personal trainer to people but a very specific kind of personal training like when you were on the line in football if you had a shoulder injury you would go and see him to rehab that shoulder like he was doing really cool stuff and not only that he became a mountain biker a climber a paddler he was doing it all and i was so inspired by him and how he was achieving goals and doing cool things i thought well maybe if i did the things he did my life.
Ray: Would be different that's how it started i just wanted a different path in my life and uh it would take me literally like three years to commit to you know quitting smoking and cleaning up my life and blah blah so by the age of 30 i was cooking and i was like i was climbing with my brother i was in the mountains i was living a life that was 180 degree change from where i was before i was learning that i had this giant engine like my brother did to do these things that i would have never thought possible before you know i was racing my mountain bike and i became very serious about mountain bike racing and then one thing led to another from about by gracing adventure racing and climbing and it and.
Ray: Then i discovered ultra running and that is i guess you would say is sort of the rest is history as they say you know like that just sort of that started it for me my very first running race was 100 miler in the yukon i never ran like first ever running race on my two feet and i've done adventure races like eco challenge qualifiers and raid the north and all these so i was used to being awake for five or six days doing it so i and i was in really good shape from mountain bike racing but running was a completely different thing but i didn't think of it that way i was like what the hell i read this article in a magazine about these people who are doing this crazy thing running 100.
Ray: Miles maybe i could try and do that and so i trained as best i could with buddies of mine that helped me to start running i did that five mile run that i told you about and a few months later i showed up at the uconn arctic ultra and not only did i finish it but i won it and i thought this is what i think i want to do with the rest of my life like i'm not the guy that's supposed to win i'm not the guy that's supposed to be able to finish this but i did it and i had no idea how i did it and i just it was just so crazy so i started going around the world doing ultra marathons all over the place.
Tayson: I i i want to slow you down here because that like how did you do it right i mean i'm sure you've pondered on that since right you went from like like couch to ultra marathon winner basically is how it kind of sounds i don't know how long that process was but i mean in your mind as you reflect backwards at that specific event what do you think made you know made the difference what was it just like you had some ability to push harder and farther was there some some strategy was there some biological factors you feel like you're just good at this i mean i'm sure you've thought back and been like how did that happen right.
Ray: Yeah well you know what i no i have i don't dwell too much into the past like i don't go into the past too too much i mean like we're having a conversation about the past so then i go into the past but on my day-to-day life i'm not really thinking yeah i'm like sorry well now i'm thinking in the now and then thinking in the forward and um you know to be honest with you you know what was it well you know have you heard the term ignorance is bliss well i didn't really know what i was getting into and and that was the beauty of the time when i like i was 35 when that race happened right and okay i i was at a time in my life where i had become.
Ray: Comfortable with who i was and um i was happy i didn't have any money but i was happy i was racing mountain bikes i had some killer mountain bikes that i was able you know a local bike shop with the bike manufacturer was sponsoring me i was training clients personal training i had followed my brother's footsteps and his career i was helping people that way and you know spent a few years learning the skills to be able to do that i mean i was just i was fulfilled in that sense and truly i believe this that if you're able to look yourself in the mirror and say to yourself you know what i'm happy i mean what else what the hell i feel good today i i feel i'm happy i'm satisfied then you've won.
Ray: The lottery because i mean at the end of the day in life i mean what what is life right i mean it's like not to get too philosophical but being happy is critical if you're really happy in your life then then you know things are going okay no matter about the money or anything else it's just truly being genuinely happy so at any rate when i first entered that race i had nothing to lose so i was like what the hell like i'm reading this article in this magazine about these amazing people to me that are doing this amazing thing how do they do it uh like i wanted to know i just wanted to know i was curious and so i was like i'm gonna do this thing and i was i would i.
Ray: Had clarity in my mind that i was not going to finish like i was certain of that but i thought i want to learn what it is that gives these people like what is it that they think why do they think that they're able to do this i want to know what it is that they think you know what i'm saying like how do they get the confidence so maybe if i do it i'm going to understand it and then you know one thing led to another and and you know i made it to the end and it was a longer process than what i'm telling you getting to the end i mean i almost quit at the halfway point but you know i came to realize at that halfway point that the things i.
Ray: Was truly concerned about like what others were gonna think when i failed like my friends what were they gonna say because all my friends told me don't even go are you crazy you're not a runner right and i was like oh my god i'm gonna have to go home and tell them all they were right you know and i realized none of that matters like it really doesn't matter it was about me like i made that choice to go there and spend every dime that i had which wasn't much to get there and i had to like run that thing down as far as i could until i couldn't go anymore and if i couldn't physically move anymore then i would know i would know the why of i was there you know and how.
Ray: And all the questions would be answered and lo and behold that that focus and that drive got me from one tree to the next to the middle of the night in the woods and the yukon to the finish line and i won the race you know and i and i realized in that moment when i crossed that finish line and i was told that i won the race because truth be told when i crossed the sunshine for a moment i thought that everybody had left because i thought i was the last one you know so when they well you know because there's only 45 people in this race right he's sort of like you know you don't see very many people out on the course like there's i saw like two people at the 40k.
Ray: Mark and then at one point in the night i crashed for like 10 minutes and your brain when you're frozen it's february in the yukon when you're frozen and you get up and you start going down the trail you're like well that's the end of that everybody's past me by now you know what i mean like you're just you're in a different headspace so um what what i what i learned was that human beings in general not just me or you but everybody human beings in general underestimate what they're capable of physically mentally and emotionally and i think that that's just something that that's a reality and i i realized in that moment that i had exceeded those those personal limits that i thought i had and then that would lead me to ultra marathons. Around the world as a matter of fact if it wasn't for the yukon i would have never gone to to egypt morocco all these different places to race in the sahara desert and then i fell in love with the sahara desert and that's how we ended up crossing the whole sahara a few years later.
Tayson: Right well yeah i i i'm sure you've been i'm sure your sanity has been questioned a lot especially by probably those people that are close to you just like in the beginning of you signing up for that i had a similar experience where just me signing up for the 70k um in the mountains like everyone i knew absolutely believed that i was that was absolutely crazy and i think when i was out on course running it you inherently start to ask yourself you know why like why am i doing this what is this about you know and and i kind of came up with this answer personally where it was like i think i do this because i'm not good at it um and i just want to get better and learn and push myself.
Tayson: But i'm curious if if in this race you kind of had a similar experience where you're out there and you're just like why am i doing it you said you mentioned like at some point you kind of realized like i need to get over what everyone else thinks about me finishing this and things like that do you think that you have any kind of moment like that in this race that like you say paves the way for you know all of these expeditions to come.
Ray: Like you mean that did that race sort of set the tone like for everything like did you find like a wire did you find.
Tayson: Something on course that like that that just kind of changed the way you viewed like your why for running it.
Ray: Well i you know what i've often said that i did have an epiphany in that race but the epiphany was more related to the decisions that i personally was making in my life like i made that decision to go there and do that and um you know because i chose to go there and do that it was on me whether whatever the outcome was it was on me and excuse me i sense then i mean you know i did a you know i don't know how many ultras after that and then i ran across the sahara and i thought for sure in the sahara i wasn't gonna make it the guy was freaked out because we're in senegal and you got this you know big film crew and you know matt damon's making a movie.
Ray: Out of out of the three of us running across the sahara and i'm thinking oh my god total imposter syndrome like i do not belong here with these two runners and even though i've done really well in all these ultras that i was in there's no i i i did the math in my head the distance to the halfway point in the sahara was further than i'd been probably in my on my feet in my life kind of thing right like i mean it just there was no way i was gonna make it there was just no way and i just thought you know what and i took the heat off myself and i thought you know what go as far as you can and when you drop out just you know it's it's it's.
Ray: Real dude like you're not gonna make it well we made it all three of us made it together obviously and that i would say was more formulative in the expeditions that i'm doing now and have been doing i've done 33 or 34 major expeditions since running the sahara you've done a lot of projects right that includes the youth expeditions with impossible possible i think what it did was it taught me that there's a there's there's a way of going on to autopilot that you just go and you do these things and you don't necessarily you plan like crazy you prepare like crazy you do everything you can to mitigate risk but you remain humble in what you're doing and you don't you don't overblow it in your mind at the same time you know it's. A mix of things it's a mix of things.
Tayson: Yeah i i so i i think well i wanted to ask you this were you more scared of dropping out or are you more scared of uh charlie in the in the film for those of you that don't know running to sahara is an amazing is an amazing film you really ought to watch it um like like ray had said it was i believe produced and it's and it's commentated by my matt damon and it was it was a really great story that's actually where you know i i think we got turned on to you is with with joe um who does our video editing and podcast production he had seen the film and he's like dude you got to talk to this guy it's amazing it's amazing so then i watched the film and.
Tayson: I was like yeah that you know anyways that's kind of how we got onto it but for those of you who haven't seen this one you should definitely see it and in the film there's there's there's three people that are running it one of them which is is charlie and he's he's more of the outspoken and and the personality that kind of gets more intense as as stress comes onto people's shoulders and his shoulders he um and it's a great it makes for a good dynamic and i don't know i guess is that is that part of the show or is that really his personality would be good i.
Ray: Mean we you know i will listen here's the thing when you're doing 40 miles a day for 111 days in the sahara desert you got to remember that like you're looking at a film that's what an hour and 43 minutes or whatever 45 minutes yeah um it's 111 days of but we literally had two showers the entire time we were out there right um you know you're in sand dunes for three weeks like all you you wake up in the morning 40 miles in the sand dude you wake up in the morning 40 miles in the sand mentally it's exhausting and you know everybody gets tired and grumpy and all that sort of thing and that's all sort of part of the dynamic but i gotta tell you i never have laughs charlie and i.
Ray: Would start laughing about the stupidest stuff and the worst injuries people have asked me what's the worst injuries you've had on expeditions like i haven't almost died i'm almost i almost died in the arctic one time on an expedition breaking through some ice but honestly the two worst injuries i ever had was in running the sahara charlie and i were laughing so hard about something stupid one day that i pulled an abdominal muscle and i could barely breathe for about two weeks and then on the way to the south pole my buddy kevin and i where and we kevin i've done many expeditions says that we need to be very careful that we don't laugh so hard that we because we pulled muscles we pulled muscles together in our uh ribs and in our abdominals.
Ray: In the south pole and across siberia and it's like it's so like through humor i've had my worst injuries on expeditions but um running the sahara was kind of neat because you got to remember like that came out in 2007 so the iphone 3 first iphone 2007 it was before social media was huge i mean it was it was it was a movie that was in theaters if you wanted to see it right and then and then it went over to itunes or or whatever and all the rest of it you could see it on your laptop but it was on hbo or something but the point is is it was one of the early running movies right there's a couple that came before it if you guys if you and your listeners want to.
Ray: See a really amazing movie it's my favorite running movie besides running the sahara obviously and it's called running on the sun it's called running on the sun and it's a film about bad water and this thing was shot in probably 2000 and the characters that are in this film before ultra running was really a big thing it's fascinating it's absolutely fascinating i always say there's like the there's like the pre-martial ulric days like the pre-martial art the pre-dean carnassus the prescott juric days and then there's the post dates you know when ultra running was changed you know forever yeah but um it became known because of those guys right and and lisa smith and um you know other great pioneers um of the of the sport some of the other names are i'm drawing blanks. On and trace and you know amazing people that that were doing incredible things but um it's neat because it's it's old but you can still watch it and the film is somewhat current in a lot of ways you know so any help.
Tayson: Yeah so i mean if you're what running though like because i think some of our listeners that are hikers and some are long distance hikers right doing the at PCT those type of trails you know they could probably relate a little bit into just like getting into that group just get up you do the same motions you cover the distance you end but i think that you know everyone at some point kind of has to have that deeper reason why right like why are you doing this and um i think a part of it can be to just like go and push like accomplish something that's never been accomplished before right that'd be a that'd be a massive driving factor but i think in inherently inside of you you have something deeper that's going to. Be driving you forward um i and with you i guess do you like what is it that you find yourself that just makes you continue to push forward day after day for a hundred and eleven days in the heat and the wind and the exposure like that um like what are you what are you getting out of it.
Ray: Well i mean truthfully it's it dude it's a long answer i mean this is what i do professionally i'm an explorer that's my job and from that job comes different things like games there's avenues for me to take care of my family i have two daughters that are athletes themselves uh you know my wife.
Tayson: Who pays an explorer like who's your who's your boss yeah but that's that's.
Ray: That's the point you you you're you're in business for yourself so you gotta hustle and it's you have sponsors that you're working with but let me let me just tell you how my life works and then you know it'll it'll give it more and and why i do what i do when i finished running the sahara what was abundantly clear to me is that through an adventure i had a voracious appetite to want to learn so as we were running across the sahara i'm learning about the water crisis in north africa i'm learning about agriculture i'm learning about economics i'm learning about culture i'm learning about geography all these things because we were on an adventure i'm learning from the people who lived there so much about north africa that i didn't know and i.
Ray: Thought wow like i've never learned this much in school so what is it about an adventure that is so educational and what i decided that when i finished running the sahara that i i didn't want to go back to doing races but instead i wanted to continue doing a these crazy expeditions and challenges that i was never really sure if i could finish because i love that unknown so i love the unpredictability but b i would take these expeditions and i would connect them to schools all around the world based on the region that i'm in talking about specific subjects so i would bring content creators or i would create the content myself and that that became a primary focus for me on almost all of my expeditions connecting them back in one way or.
Ray: Another whether through live website or social media to students in schools who are uh following me so that became a thing for me but simultaneous to that i started a foundation called impossible possible which is based in the united states and in canada and what we do with impossible possible is we take young people 16 to 21 years of age on their own expeditions that are learning based all over the world we've done 15 of these youth expeditions so far ranging from uh peruvian and brazilian amazon to sahara desert to rajasthan to the canadian arctic to bolivian ultraplano etc and they learn about a specific subject while in that region and over the course of six days an adventure an expedition conducted by 16 year olds running you know whatever 13 miles a day are.
Ray: Also teaching six different modules about a subject like like dinosaurs that's the stuff that's what we started in utah i told you before we got online here that we did the big one in utah on the the rise of the dinosaurs in that region and we you know our youth ambassadors are running to a dinosaur dig site with the university of utah and they're casting dinosaur bones live on satellite and 20 000 kids in classrooms around the world are watching this and it's a great way to learn and so long way around to answer your question i do my expeditions i am very grateful to be funded by uh companies that help me to be able to do the expeditions i do but what i do is i combine the resources that i gain for.
Ray: My own expeditions and i pool resources throughout a year and i donate a percentage of the sponsorships that i raise sometimes all of it to be able to conduct an impossible possible youth expedition because everything we do with impossible possible is 100 free there's no cost for kids that go on the expeditions we are all volunteers and the volunteers that go on the youth expeditions like the teachers and the content reporters and all this stuff all of their expenses are paid but they don't get paid all monies are spent in the regions where we're doing the adventure so i got these two things on the go and they're they're intertwined completely because if i do my expeditions then i get funding for impossible possible it's very important to me but also i have a guiding. Company called topic one and we take people on adults on expeditions which are not free but i guide people to amazing places on expeditions and um yeah they go and they learn what it's like to be an impossible possible youth ambassador they cross a remote part of the world and um becomes a learning opportunity for them themselves so everything's intertwined so how do the bills get paid i mean it's just you're always hustling.
Tayson: You know yeah yeah you're all in it and it seems like the big why behind it for you is that this this world of adventure and learning is really what what inspires you and is and is this why to go and and do some of this right.
Ray: Yeah no it's it's absolutely why i like it's it's you know so to be clear for your uh listeners and especially like the PCT people and the the uh appalachian trail and all you know when you're going unsupported all of my arctic expeditions are unsupported or self-contained for the most part i typically do arctic expeditions in the middle of winter because i love the arctic skies when the sun is just cresting the horizon you know the snow the ice everything at its extreme and it's most cold and being able to share and immerse students in a place like that that they're never or may never may never get the opportunity to go and see physically themselves but i go there and i'm standing in the middle of that spot i'm able to share with them.
Ray: What it's like to be there right i mean it's really a driving force for me but at the end of the day too i'm excited about the adventure i'd be lying if i said well i'm going and i'm doing it for this but truthfully you know i'm doing the adventure because i want to do the adventure it's that the motivating factor for me while i'm on the adventure and that i'm doing it what really keeps me cranking and going is the fact that i've got 10 000 20 000 whatever teammates in classrooms all over the world like that's huge for me it just is we all have our thing that gets us stoked when we're doing expeditions and that's a big part of it for me is to be able to share the places in. Photo video maybe sometimes live satellite when i'm on a desert expedition i typically am supported so i'll go 20 miles get a resupply 20 miles get a reason etc try to do 15 miles 40 50 miles a day and um you know on those trips i'm able to bring photographer videographers i can create really great content you know yeah.
Tayson: Yeah i wanna i wanna ask you about you know some specifics of some of these you know and how challenging some of these expeditions are but while we're on the topic of impossible the possible i find it very interesting to know why people donate and and work with charities or start charities or non-profits and all of this and why they do the causes that they do it right so here at our vitals we we donate one percent of revenue and you know so far we've donated everything that we've donated so far has gone into um clean water projects in africa and cambodia in these different areas but i i find that i want more fulfillment out of it meaning it's one thing to write a check it's another thing to have a more personal relationship.
Tayson: With where those funds are going and feel and see the impact for yourself i think that would that's that's what would make it more impactful for me is the guy who's writing these these big checks you know and so i find it very interesting like how people get to it because you are a hundred percent passionate about this organization other people are a hundred percent passionate about clean water projects other people are 100 passionate about fill in the blank right so i'm curious i'd love to just hear if you've got a response to this of why all the things that you could do ray all the things that you could impact this world and leave a legacy and help people why impossible the possible.
Ray: Well you know what i was on the board of the reins well foundation with my wife working with projects in north africa and different regions of africa building water projects um you know matt damon created h2o africa which was uh combined with water.org and they raised a ton of dough through uh the running the sahara project uh for these areas um and uh and and you know what when we did that project i made lifelong friends in the sahara but and and the water the water component was was really important to me but you know when sometimes like when you eat a really good meal and you're like totally full and you're like all right i've had enough like now i know i've had enough right but like if i sit down to like wings.
Ray: I can just keep going forever and ever and i've never really sat on a slide well when i when i was meeting with my friends uh after the running the sahara project and i was on the board of um the reins law foundation i was volunteering with the one by one foundation at the time and i was talking about this idea that i had where wow you know like i remember what it was like to be 16 17 like i remember clearly i still remember what my view of the world was and it wasn't totally accurate like it wasn't accurate by a long shot because why i didn't have experiences now we have the capacity for experiences and we have technology to share those experiences like social media is a double-edged sword in one way.
Ray: It creates unrealistic expectations of people like you know from people on what they're supposed to look like feel like how many likes they're getting you know all this jazz but on the other end you can have a friend in india you can have a friend in italy you can have a friend anywhere in the world and be sharing you know your lives with that friend so in a lot of ways you know it's it's a it's a great thing too so when i started impossible possible uh we got the idea of some going into 2008 and you know the technology the satellite technology was improving our ability to communicate with improving i had this idea that i wanted to take these kids on expeditions as i had mentioned to you before and but it has.
Ray: To be free we'd all be volunteers and we would do this crazy thing and we would create educational programs because because going back to what i said before i remember what it was like to have a world view but let's take kids regardless of where they come from what their income is whatever as long as they have a voracious appetite to want to learn and they get picked by the selection committee if i could take 100 kids i would i just don't have the budget to but and we'll put these teams together and for the ones that don't get selected they get to be part of it through their classroom portals and through social media or whatever and learn about the world and learn about a subject while you're learning about the world and be.
Ray: Inspired by your peers you know and so i knew when i started doing this i i had felt like i had the full meal right like i was like yeah you know what this is what i love doing this is just this is what i dig because it's right up my alley like i love being on an adventure but even more i love being on an adventure where i get to see other people you know take from it and learn from it and grow from it and hey i'll tell you something that goes for the adult expeditions with catholic one too although catholic one is a for-profit business it donates to impossible to possible but nonetheless what is not what doesn't change with these adults is the same thing the youth ambassadors go through it.
Ray: Is a completely life-changing event and i see people when they come on our the adult expeditions when they come on the adult expeditions and they haven't they have a assumption of what it's going to be like most of these people are very experienced today like i've had everest climbers i've had finishers of marathon day bad water etc and they come on our our expeditions with an expectation of because it's all endurance based in their mind and then they do the expedition and they learn things and they bond with their teammates and they help others and they come out the other end and they're like this is the greatest trip i've ever done i've learned something from it and so that process to me is fascinating and you know like there's other ways that i yeah. It's very fulfilling there's other ways that i give back i mean i volunteer in a lot of ways like there's some people that i coach uh there's other things i do that nobody ever hears about i speak in a ton of schools um and i get fulfillment from that also um as part of my community my adventure community but you know my work was impossible possible that's what i love doing.
Tayson: Yeah yeah it's it's really fascinating for sure and and just listening to you talk about it you can see the level of fulfillment and passion you have for that um which is which is incredible i mean it sounds like you're just doing amazing things and um i i i think when people do understand the why they can they can endure the what and what i mean by that is i think when kids are out there seeing the why do i need to learn this and seeing it firsthand it's going to change that whole experience for them which is is an incredible thing that you're definitely putting on i think i think for me sometimes i i guess i guess i feel like maybe i'm still searching just a little bit to figure out the best.
Tayson: Way but i think i'd love to find what you found with just that fulfillment being able to see that i think like you mentioned with social media a lot of times um you know i'm just i'm working on a screen right i mean we go out we film content we backpack and stuff but um other times you're just working a lot on a screen and you don't get that two-way communication so we started a a challenge this last year is called the hundred mile challenge where we we did a beta group of 100 people and and uh just just tried to get them to go into a 100 mile hike and it was very interesting we learned a lot and it was really enjoyable and i i got so much personal um purpose i guess.
Tayson: From doing that because it was more of that two-way street and we're going to try to make it more so that way next year that it was one of the more impactful things i've done in a long time just to hear people pushing their limits hitting their own goals and it was it was pretty special something i definitely want to build upon but um let's switch gears here for a second ray i you've you've got to be someone who has almost more stories that you could tell than anyone out there the amount of the amount of experiences you've probably had out there are just i i i don't know i'd like to even try to comprehend them but um in your in your opinion what has been your hardest expedition.
Ray: Yeah you know i get that question a lot and i've done something people automatically assume it's got to be the arctic stuff or the cell phone or something like that you know when we went across the sahara i was like all right nothing could possibly be this hard ever again and the sahara is still the longest thing i've done right because i mean there's only so many things you can do that are 4 500 miles long then when we went to then i did a couple of smaller projects then i went to the south pole and i thought okay this was really hard you know but then you know when i went to the cell phone when you go to the south pole and go to antarctica uh you go november december january right and.
Ray: The sun is in the sky 24 7 right so your tent eventually if it's it could be quite cold outside but when you get inside your tent it starts to get that greenhouse effect going right and so there's and there's no polar bears up on that you know there or anything like that then i started doing process in the canadian arctic in winter and when i started doing canadian arctic projects then of course you're not sleeping at night because there's polar bears and you don't know if they're coming you know and there's molds and there's everything else out there right there's there's water on there's water there's a chance of falling in a cr you know broken breaking ice there is you just take bear.
Tayson: Spray for a polar bear or do they or do you have something special for them.
Ray: Don't do bear spray bear spray we call that in the arctic i call that seasoning because then usually typically will blow back on you yeah and then now you're even more tastier for the bear you know like you know the polar is like the apex hunter on the planet right it's like you just don't want to run into a polar bear you just don't want to and so i bring firearms i do all the safety protocols that i can you know you use a polar bear fence whenever possible but i mean you.
Tayson: Just is that just an electric fence.
Ray: Uh well no it's a warning fence for to scare the bear away and to wake you up if you if you're asleep and then and then you know the cold of the canadian arctic is so extreme so then it became the canadian arctic expeditions that were the most difficult thing but looking back now if i was to grade things out of all these exhibitions i think the hardest trip i did was in 2011 in the summer middle of summer 2011 i ran the length of the atacama drive place on earth i think you mentioned at the beginning it.
Tayson: Was 800 miles but i probably just butchered the name but yeah.
Ray: No it's good 800 miles in like 19 days uh or whatever 19 20 days and it was so difficult because the environment was so heinous dude it was like there was more of a you you could probably verify this but there was more of a hole in the ozone at that time i i actually think that it's improved over time and look i i don't typically burn i was burned to an entire complete crisp even wearing spf 50. I've had to wear long sleeves and gloves to protect my skin because it was you know turning into blisters like huge blisters the heat was insane it was death valley hot every day and intense wind and salt was in the wind all the time there's like like a a fine skiff of a little skip of.
Ray: Salt blowing off of the desert it just was brutal man it was great i suffered and i don't get blisters i had blisters and i mean it's it sounds like it wouldn't be and i had long resupplies really sometimes i'd be like 50k to a resupply and so running softly i'd have to say yeah that was so low as well and i would have to say that would probably be the most difficult now i've done shorter expeditions in 2020 i went solo from the island of kiki tarjak across uh like the arctic ocean across the open sea to baffle island and then cross baffled island kept on going to the other side and uh that was a shorter trip it was like five days but unsupported like i'm self-contained with a sled with all my.
Ray: Gear and everything and dude it was like minus 65 with the wind my eyelids frosted through my goggles it was so brutal for four and a half days but i mean you know so i've done i've done long things short things but you know those are those are these shorter ones are sometimes harder for the amount of time that you're out there it's not all yeah i guess it's just a big mishmash but i would say that the that you know uh out of cabin was right up there if not at the top.
Tayson: And when you're going through that desert like how much water are you drinking in a day are you measuring that are you like how do you know how to stay hydrated.
Ray: Yeah so this i just did a west to east transect of death valley this past july and we were like up over mountains through the through death valley itself you know everything bushwhacking a mix of everything and we were resupplies 20 miles between resupplies and we were drinking every 20 miles eight liters carrying five yeah carrying five and drinking them all out and then drinking another three sitting there two to three.
Tayson: Wow so it's a lot so there's i feel like there's a pretty big misconception out there that you know that you drink that much and you're gonna flush your body right like like flush it of of needed nutrients and stuff like that i imagine that you're you're adding additives to your water electrolytes things like that.
Ray: Oh tons of electrolytes and don't forget a year of training and property like for this death valley transect i six months i trained specifically i was in the sauna every day i have a sauna in my backyard training it you know sitting in there with my electrolyte getting my electrolyte balance right training myself where i live it's very hot and humid in the summer and you know in the lead up in june it was very hot and humid putting in big miles training my body to process fluids you know.
Tayson: Yeah can you improve it train your body yeah someone someone once told me that like i'm a huge sweater right so when i go do like a sweat test in like 70 degree temperatures in the middle of the day with with a little bit of wind i'll lose two liters of water in one hour of running and not even like not even like pushing as like as absolutely hard as i can just like like a maybe a seven or eight out of ten uh you know effort level all those two liters of water and someone told me that like i can't change that like like my body will only get more efficient at cooling itself even if i dropped you know more weight and things like that but i'll just that's just biologically in me. When you're doing this kind of training is that is that something that you can train are you just training your body how to be efficient without parameters.
Ray: There's the physiological answer the science answer right like the one you got and then there's the answer of like the way i feel answer and sometimes the way you feel perceived exertion the way you feel is just as important as the actual scientific answer so i believe you can adapt over time to certain situations the human body can adapt to just about anything like we laugh here because today i have to go in celsius okay so today it was 10 degrees celsius when we woke up in the morning it's unusually cool for this time of year we're used to like 20 degrees celsius now in the winter it can get to minus 35 minus 40 where i live if it was 10 degrees celsius when it's normally minus 35 to minus 40 we'd be running. Around with our t-shirts and shorts dude i went to the grocery store this morning with a down jacket on so what happened i adapted the other way i adapted to heat right in a very short period of time so i do think the body does adapt i think you just have to be really careful you know you just you're not foolish about it right.
Tayson: Right right yeah that's that's super interesting um on some of these expeditions that you've been on i'm sure you've had some some pretty close calls what do you feel like has been like the closest call to death that you've had on an expedition well i.
Ray: You know what i broke through some ice in the canadian arctic one year on an expedition i made a mistake and i was overconfident in my ability to determine the thickness of this this river i was on and i broke through it it's much longer story you know we won't have time for it today but it but suffice to say like the punchline is i broke that it's ice it almost got washed underneath the ice pulled underneath the ice by the current i was able to get out of this hole after a few minutes i mean literally that was the closest i'd come and i i mean i had a long way to go to get to safety it's a long story but yeah i i say it was the most it was the worst.
Ray: Thing that ever happened it was also the best thing that ever happened to me because it gave me clarity in my life although i'd been on a path for quite some time with expeditions and doing the things that i'm doing uh that that experience gave me clarity of you know what was important in my life and that i was spending a lot of time you know you know in in friendships and whatnot and i'm sure you have these friends in your life that you know you you do your best you want to communicate with everybody and you're emailing everybody and you're emailing these friends and it always seems like you're the one reaching out right and after a while it's like it only seems they're reaching out to you and they need something and otherwise.
Ray: Like you're the one always asking hey how's your family doing etc etc and so it wasn't like i came out of that ice and judged a bunch of people and said okay i'm no longer speaking to you i just kind of let go it was almost like i was um uh i don't even know what the right word is but there was like a there was like a filter yeah yeah it just all of a sudden i was like you know what i'm cool with it and i instead of wasting 10 minutes writing those emails i'll spend 10 more minutes with my daughters you know and it was just very clear to me who in my life was critically important and who those people were that were so important to me in my life and. I bring them closer into my circle and i think that it uh it was really good for me to go through that so.
Tayson: Yeah yeah that's incredible well i know we're we're getting towards the end here so i'll quit asking these these massive uh deep questions because i'd love to get deeper into these and and you're just a breath of of information i i gravitate towards people like you because you have so much really to share um but let me let me ask this just two kind of closing things um what's what's in your future what trips or what bucket list expeditions or things are you looking at next.
Ray: Well i'm guiding a group in the canadian arctic in a few weeks uh for 10 days so i'm really excited about that because they've been waiting since the pandemic uh you know since the last two years to go on this trip likewise with impossible possible we're going to be doing our first youth expedition since 2018 or 19 because of everything that was going on right so we're doing that next year very excited about that and then i'm also guiding a group of two groups of clients in the atacama desert in november and stoked about that and then i've got an arctic project of my own that i'll be doing in january no shortage of stuff on the go like no shortage so these guiding experiences.
Tayson: That you put together what level of people are you getting are you getting absolute beginners or are you getting like seasoned backpackers to come on these with you it depends on the tricks.
Ray: Like we guided i guided one uh right before the pandemic lockdown like literally weeks before the lockdowns and it was in siberia on lake by call in february and that was for advanced experience you know that was a small group we i think we have four in that group and so um that's sort of you know and then right on up to you know add a camera where you know it's fully supported so people are able to uh you know get in the four-wheel drive if they need to if there's an issue right but still it's it's intense they're all intense yeah just different levels.
Tayson: All right sounds very fascinating for those that want to know more about that maybe just repeat a little bit slower this time the name of that guiding company.
Ray: So it's it's you know what the easiest thing is because you're on instagram and i'm assuming this will be on just go to my instagram page okay just my raise ahab and direct message me and i can give you more information.
Tayson: Okay and uh yeah i mean with that is there any other things that you want to mention any you know if people are interested in impossible impossible two possible uh.
Ray: Well yeah you know what i would say with impossible impossible just stay tuned we will be making announcements in october on the location of the next youth expedition details and stuff like that and we'll start the process there there will be an online application available for potential youth that are interested all that's coming down the pipe so stay tuned and um yeah i mean i guess that's about.
Tayson: It is is instagram the best place just to stay up to date with you and in your life i know that i i think i saw you just doing a trip with your daughter just barely yeah she looks like quite the runner by the way.
Ray: Yeah both my daughters i have two daughters both are and they're both they both paddle they sprint kayak and spring canoe i don't know how big of a thing is that is down there but it's a huge thing up here so they race in spring canoe and then they cross country ski race in the winter so they're right into doing stuff but yeah we were just away in the mountains in quebec uh not far from where we live and um not far in canada it's like a seven hour drive and um yeah so they're right into all this kind of stuff yeah instagram because that seems to be where people are and i post on instagram now and it it updates my facebook page so i'm on both right okay.
Tayson: Okay well if you want to go um follow along with with ray and everything that he's got going on go find him on instagram follow him there um it's been absolutely fascinating to have you on ray i'm sure there's there's so much more i'd love to ask you so at some point maybe i'll have to try to see if i can steal a few more minutes of your time in the future and go through some more of these amazing expeditions that you have going on but thanks so much for being on here.
Ray: Yeah i'd love to be an honor to be on here again i'm working on a book so maybe after i get that book out i can.
Tayson: Come back on be awesome yes yes please please do that would be a great time to uh to reconnect for sure so all right right on thank you.
Ray: Yep thanks so much.
