Climbing One of the World's Toughest Mountains Changes the Way You See Food

If you imagine climbing Mount Everest, you'll likely picture men in huge suits scaling a mountain, but you might not understand what goes into being a professional climber. It's really dangerous and people do die. Even knowing that their families and friends worry about them from far away, climbers have to take risks; dealing with "food as fuel" is an important part of controlling that risk factor.

My diet isn't highly refined. I'm a pseudo-foodie. I love going to great restaurants. I try to be organic and balanced, but when I'm in training mode, I pretty much eat what I want. Leading up to big climbing expeditions, which are at high altitudes and cover long distances, I can eat anything—they're almost an excuse. You need to build fat and muscle because you're constantly moving. You need mass.

In training mode, I'm like a trash can. I eat, eat, and eat. I have a total weakness for pie and cake. I've been on expeditions where I lose 20 pounds, and since I'm only five-foot-eight and 160 pounds (when I'm in fighting shape), losing that weight is a lot. I've been doing expeditions for 15 years, so my body has developed a sense of it. It becomes efficient.

On the mountain, I have a mixture of what triathletes use: bars and trail mixes, but also real food such as sandwiches and energy drinks. It's incredible when you realize how little your body needs to survive because your metabolism recognizes what's happening. Your body is hyper-efficient up there, and that's when food really becomes fuel. When you're having a huge day on the mountain, you can't be too concerned with how something tastes. It's just like gas in the tank.

The Shark's Fin is a formation on a peak called Mount Meru, a route that has seen more attempts and more failures than any other in the Himalayas. Though the Shark's Fin isn't discussed much in the mainstream, it has gained quite a reputation in the inner heart of the professional climbing community, mostly because of those failed attempts.

The people who have spent a lot of time up on technical, high-altitude climbs are the ones who are usually intrigued and motivated by the fact that there have been so many failures on this mountain, myself included. For a professional climber, that kind of reputation can make a route a coveted first ascent: it becomes part of your legacy and it puts you up in the ranks of history. No one has been able to go past a certain point, so as a climber, this shows you where you stand.

I took on the Shark's Fin with Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk in 2011. Conrad Anker is a legendary climber with a long history of doing insane climbs around the world. He's also my mentor. We first began climbing together in 2001 and over time, he has become a very good friend; we have a deep connection and have been on very difficult and challenging expeditions together. He is an incredible athlete and highly skilled in every arena of climbing: high altitude, big wall, ice, and mixed rock. Renan Ozturk is five or six years younger than me but has put time into the big mountains in Pakistan and Alaska. Before 2008, I didn't know him very well, but Conrad knew him and thought he would be right for our trip. I trust Conrad's judgment.

We all knew about Shark's Fin's notorious reputation and we knew that we would have to draw from each of our experiences as individual climbers. You need to be good at altitude: Conrad and I have been up Everest and beyond. As a technical climber, you need to put some time into big mountain climbing–Nepal, Alaska–as well as Yosemite, and you also need ice-climbing skills. We all have our own strengths; that's why it's important to have a good team, so we can draw from each others' skill sets. There's multiple ways to climb mountains, but for us, alpine and big wall are the styles that we consider to be the best. We wanted to climb the Shark's Fin from the ground up. Once we started climbing, we just kept going up.

When I'm packing food for an expedition like the Shark's Fin, I divide it into two parts: base camp and climbing food. If I'm leaving for two months, I pack a cooler with luxury foods like gummy bears, chocolate, good tea, and honey for base camp, where you're not as concerned about weight. But when it comes to actual climbing food, weight becomes an issue, so you're trying to weigh the food versus calories and protein.

Eating meals in the morning on a mountain is a scramble. You have to melt the snow into water so you can use it to cook and hydrate food like oatmeal. By the time it's ready to eat, you're stuffing it down your throat. During the day, you're trying to find a moment to eat because you're always performing a task, whether you're belaying, carrying packs, hauling bags to and from a location, breaking down camp, stacking the ropes, or organizing the gear. If you drop or mis-clip something, the trip is done. There's a lot of mental pressure and not a whole lot of stopping for lunch to enjoy the view.

Dinner is one of those few moments of relief—even though it's been a long day and you just want to get the food made—because you're exhausted and want to go to bed. At dinner on Meru, we consumed freeze-dried foods like couscous with a couple chunks of salami, Parmesan, and drizzled it with olive oil that we carried in plastic Coke bottles because they're built to withstand high altitude pressures and can get knocked around. As you're recounting the day and talking about plans for tomorrow, there's breathing space and time to joke around a little bit.

In the beginning of every climb, your conversations are about your relationships, but as you get further along in expeditions, the discussion really turns towards food. You're busy rationing out meals, but you also begin to discuss that great Tuscan steak dinner you'd like to make: how you are going to go to the store to look for some incredibly well-marbled, grass-fed beef and how you're going to cook it. If you've gotten to this point of the conversation in your climb, it's not necessarily great to talk about. You've tried avoiding going there until now, because your body is basically eating itself. You're burning an insane amount of calories and not nearly putting in enough to maintain normalcy.

Part of what it takes to be a good climber is estimating how long it takes to get up a mountain. Years of experience help you guesstimate how far you'll get each day and how much food you need to bring. On Meru, we were ambitious. We thought we could do it in seven days, so we brought enough food for that span of time. We hit a storm that lasted for five days. Eighty percent of the mountain was still above us, so we were hanging in a space the size of a twin bed for that length of time. We cut our rations in half while we waited it out. We ended up climbing for a total of 19 days, which resulted in stretching seven days worth of food for 19 days, while burning a ton of calories. A good team always takes care of each other, so you're conscious of not eating more than anyone else and making sure that everyone is getting what they need.

Parmesan rind is actually edible. If you roast it on the stove, it tastes like a piece of fried cheese that we like to call "rostis." You know you're on an expedition when everyone is looking forward to a piece around the size of two centimeters of cheese rind. It says a lot about the conditions. It's a little bit absurd, sitting around a little stove, thinking, I'm so lucky to be eating this little piece of rind, slowly nibbling at it. When it's gone, you take the oil that's left on your fingertips from holding the rosti and rub it all over your face into the cracks of your hands because your skin is so cracked and dry. Nothing goes to waste.

Want to learn more about Jimmy Chin's experience climbing the Shark's Fin? Check out MERU, the documentary directed and produced by the world-class climber himself, which opens in NY, LA, and select cities on August 14. National rollout to follow.