Keep Going: Climbing, Friendship, Grit, and the Adventure of a Lifetime

Keep Going: Climbing, Friendship, Grit, and the Adventure of a Lifetime

What remarkable journeys have people faced head‑on against addiction and adversity? This conversation turns to mountains rather than bottles, but the heartbeat is the same: resilience, grit, and refusing to give up on yourself. Rod Price and Kerry McCarter sit down with lifelong mountaineers Jim and Eileen Brisbane and their long‑time climbing partner, Faye Poland.

Faye, a PhD chemist whose serious climbing took off after 60 and after her husband died, talks about mountains as “good therapy” and shares how grief, age and thousands of summits all fed into one simple drive: keep going. You’ll hear how this trio formed a rock‑solid partnership built on trust, shared values and a very dry sense of humour.

Faye laughs that she’s “very small” and “not very talented, technically wise, but I have a lot of perseverance and I don’t give up,” while Jim sums up her biggest lesson to him: “You don’t have to be the best climber or the fastest climber or the smartest climber, but you have to be persistent.” They talk about turning back when it’s unsafe, crying over failed attempts, and still feeling proud because they “climb for another day”.

Terrifying moments – like Faye being hit by falling ice and thinking she would die – sit alongside birthday cupcakes on icy summits and ten‑day adventures in awful weather that later become favourite memories. For anyone rebuilding life after loss, wrestling with low mood, or pushing through recovery, their stories land close to home. They show how the outdoors can reset your perspective, how suffering can deepen friendships, and why goals can shrink with age but adventure doesn’t have to.

You’ll come away asking yourself: where’s your next “high point”, and who do you want standing beside you when it gets hard?