Always live your best life: Why do people climb mountains?

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast:

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, people turned to outdoor activities to stay active while social distancing. One of those activities was mountain climbing, mountains above 14,000 feet in particular. They are called 14'ers and Colorado is the epicenter of these types of peaks.

5 Things Sunday host James Brown sat down with Lloyd Athearn, the executive director of the Colorado 14'ers initiative. Athearn said the appeal of climbing mountains is both physical and mental and that the rewards are spectacular as well as the consequences. So far at least six people have died climbing 14'ers this year.

James also sat down with Jason Kolo, a landscaper from Cleveland Ohio and an avid hiker who has climbed mountains all over the world.

Jason said he knows the risks, but said he doesn't go into it with that mindset. Instead, he said he focuses on the positive like being in nature.

He said, "being in the clouds or above the clouds is an amazing feeling."

To read more about 14'ers, click below"

People die summitting 14,000-foot mountain peaks. These climbers do it anyway. By USA TODAY's Grace Hauk

Protecting Colorado 14'ers - Colorado Fourteeners Initiative

Follow James Brown, Lloyd Athearn, Jason Kolo and Grace Hauk on Twitter.

If you have a comment about the show or a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, send James Brown an email at jabrown@usatoday.com or podcasts@usatoday.com. You can also leave him a voicemail at 585-484-0339. We might have you on the show.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

James Brown: Hello, and welcome to Five Things. It's November 27, 2022. Go Bills. Every week, we take a question, an idea or concept and go deep. In this week, we start on a mountain in Colorado.

Jason Kolo: That's where I came from. I started out somewhere way down there, and here's the trail.

James Brown: That's Jason Kolo. He's from Cleveland. It Jason and his regular climbing companion, Oliver the border collie are climbing down Mount Massive.

Jason Kolo: You ready to go, huh? All right. Go on.

James Brown: He's a landscaper and a lifelong hiker. His Twitter biography ends with living outside always. We'll hear more from Jason in a bit. If you search fourteeners or mountains above 14,000 feet on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, you'll find thousands of videos like Jason's. Lloyd Athearn, the executive director of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, claims that this activity is growing. Between five and 7% more hikers tried each year. Like many other outdoor activities in parks he says use of fourteeners spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lloyd Athearn: Last year, we had an estimate of 303,000 people. In 2020 during the pandemic summer, we anticipated that there were 415,000.

James Brown: That's largely because Colorado is the epicenter for fourteeners in North America, but there are mountains that size all over the American West.

Lloyd Athearn: It can be both a very physical challenging activity. It can be a very intellectually challenging activity as you're trying to see, "Can I figure this out?"

James Brown: The rewards are breathtaking.

Lloyd Athearn: It's really hard to capture just the majesty of being in some of these places where you're looking around at the scenery and you're thinking, "Wow, this is just spectacular." Instead of looking up at mountains from below, you're looking above them or across at them.

James Brown: But so are the consequences. At least six people have died climbing fourteeners so far this year, and that's just the ones tracked by the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. As I understand, not everybody comes back.

Lloyd Athearn: Well, I think that's way overblown. Just like airliners, occasionally, things go wrong. They fall from the sky, people die. Sometimes in the mountains you are in an environment where poor decisions, weather, meteorological conditions can create situations where accidents happen. Mountains can be very unforgiving locations, so yes, people do die. Most years I've been tracking it because it does tend to, especially if we get into a season with a number of fatalities, it tends to generate media interests. I've been tracking over the years how many people die on fourteeners. In the last 22 years, we've had, I think two or three years where we had zero people die. In the most deadly year, 2017, there were 10 people who died.

James Brown: Jason Kolo, who we met at the beginning of this episode, knows the danger. Six people have died doing this, died climbing fourteeners in Colorado.

Jason Kolo: Yeah.

James Brown: You're aware of this?

Jason Kolo: Oh, yes, yes. I'm aware of it. I'm not saying it doesn't bother me. I don't want to die, but I know if I slip or fall or get hurt, there's a very good chance you could die, especially because in Colorado, I go alone with my dog. It's just me and him and I have my GPS and I have my National Geographic maps. If you're at the top, you get cell phone service, but when you're down in the thick of it, you don't ... there's just nothing. You have no service, there's no GPS, there's really nothing when you're in the woods heading up.

James Brown: If you think of a city of 300,000 and only six people dying, it's not ... that would be a very, very safe place.

Jason Kolo: Right.

James Brown: But in a city or in a community of 300,000, those folks who are dying aren't putting themselves in peril, I would argue.

Jason Kolo: Yeah. Right. I agree. You are putting yourself in a sticky situation. You go prepared, but you never think ... you always think today's going to be a good day, I guess. You never think, "Today is the day where, oh, I'm going to get hurt, or I'm going to fall, or a big rock's going to land on my head." You don't go with that mindset. You do know what can happen and you're careful about it, but look for the positive, not the what could happen.

James Brown: The positive is just being out in nature, challenging yourself?

Jason Kolo: Yeah. Yeah. It's a test of your endurance, a test your mental ability. When you get to the top, it's a giant reward. It's amazing. Being either in the clouds or above the clouds is really an amazing feeling. It just takes over your body.

James Brown: Jason has climbed mountains all over the world. For the last five years, he's driven from Ohio to Colorado, the focus on fourteeners because of a chance encounter.

Jason Kolo: I was in Utah. I was in Utah, my mom had cancer, so we went to Utah. I have a job where I could go help take care of her while she was there, and I did my first mountain there. When I came back down at the hotel we were staying at, there happened to be someone who also hiked and was well past what I did. They were the ones sitting at a bar over a beer told me, "Hey, well, have you ever been to Colorado? There's a whole group of fourteeners.

There's 50 of them that you could hit, and most of them are very climbable and most of them you don't need mad skill to get to. A lot of them, you do, but most of them you don't." That struck up a couple hour conversation in a bar in the middle of Utah, Sandy, Utah. That's where I first heard fourteeners and then I went for it. I just packed up my dog and on my 40th birthday was like, "Colorado, here we come." I summited Mount Elbert and Mount Massive on my birthday, which happens to be my dog's birthday too; same date, which is weird.

James Brown: So at least the fourteener element is relatively new to you.

Jason Kolo: Past five years, yes. In the past five years, I've gone from hiking and doing long-distance trails to all the way up to 19,341 feet in Africa.

James Brown: Wow.

Jason Kolo: So yeah, in the past five years since I turned 40, I've really been doing it a lot, lot more. It's been 10 years total, but-

James Brown: How's your mom?

Jason Kolo: She passed. Yeah.

James Brown: My condolences.

Jason Kolo: Thank you. It's better off. It's the thing where she was suffering, and we went to Utah for our last ditch effort at some special new thing that didn't work, but she loved the wilderness. She's the reason I am out outside. I don't know if you've seen my pictures, but some of my pictures are dedicated to her because when she was in Utah, that's why I originally went to the mountains was to show her pictures of what she could no longer do. I'd go hiking and she'd do her stuff, and I'd come home from her treatment. I'd show her pictures of my adventure, and it just made her smile. So I continued and kept continuing and never stopped.

James Brown: I've found, because I've lost a lot of relatives myself-

Jason Kolo: I'm sorry, it's not easy.

James Brown: Thanks. Thank you. Three siblings, two brothers, one sister.

Jason Kolo: Wow. I'm sorry.

James Brown: When I think about it, I think of one of my favorite lines I've ever heard. It's from No Country For Old Men, "Baby things happen. You can't take them back."

Jason Kolo: That's so true.

James Brown: I found by doing things that I know that they loved, that I feel closer to them. Do you get that feeling too?

Jason Kolo: She's the reason we hiked. Everyone would be away at work and we'd go down to the national park and go for a hike as a little kid, and then we'd go camping as a whole family. Hocking Hills basically is where we used to go a lot, and yeah, I do. My dad asked me, he asked me a lot of the same questions, "Why do you go up there?" To him, because he loves my mom still, I say "Because she can see me and she knows I'm up there, and she can do things that she's never done because she sees me," which warms his heart. So I do feel her up there a bit. It's a good experience.

James Brown: How long do you intend to do this?

Jason Kolo: Until I can't walk.

James Brown: Wow.

Jason Kolo: Yeah. I've seen older people up there, 50s, 60s, still doing what I was doing when I started this in my young 30s. If they can do it, I think I can do it, so there's plenty of mountains to still reach the summit of.

James Brown: Any famous last words?

Jason Kolo: Just live life to your best, right? Always live your best life.

James Brown: Jason Kolo, thank you for joining me.

Jason Kolo: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

James Brown: If you like the show, write us a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening. Do me a favor, share it with a friend. What do you think of the show? Email me at jabrown@usatoday.com or leave me a message at 585-484-0339. A special thanks to USA Today's Grace Hauk for her great article on Fourteeners. You can find it on usatoday.com. We'll also link to it in the description. Thanks to Lloyd Athearn and Jason Kolo for joining me. Thanks to Alexis Gustin and Shannon Ray Green for their production assistant. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning. For all of us at USA Today, thanks for listening. I'm James Brown, and as always, be well.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Always live your best life: Why do people climb mountains?