(dramatic music)

- Too dangerous, too expensive,

and way too risky for a novice climber.

That's what West Pointgrad Harold Earls was told

when he decided to conquerthe world's tallest mountain.

Take a look.

- [Reporter] Harold and Rachel Earls

were as over the moon is any young couple,

when they married in 2015.

A West Point grad, Harold, had big goals,

one of which was to climb MountEverest as soon as possible.

Rachel gave him loving support,

but knew his highly dangerous dream

could mean the end of hers.

Less than a year later, Haroldconquered Mount Everest,

but not without suffering for them both.

In their new book, "A Higher Calling,"

the Earls share the manylessons they learned

that apply to us all.

(gentle music)

- Please welcome to "The 700 Club,"

Captain Harold and Rachel Earls.

Welcome to both of you,good to have you with us.

- Hey, thanks for having us on.

- We're so excited to be here.

- Well, so Harold, let me start with you.

Where did this idea,

this drive to climbMount Everest come from?

- Great question, so when Iwas a cadet at West Point,

I was sitting in my barracks room,

and I wrote out my bucket list.

And at the very top of thatlist was climb Mount Everest.

- [Terry] Wow, just like that, huh?

(laughing)

- It was beautiful, Ithink is how God took that.

So at the beginning, it wasa dream that I wanted to do,

but I think what was so beautiful,

and really where the title of the book,

"A Higher Calling" comes from,

is how God took that and manifested that

into something more beautiful

than just climbing Everest.

- Rachel, you guys werenewlyweds at this point.

I mean, you could have opposed

what many people alreadythought was a crazy idea,

but you actually gave yourhusband your full support.

Talk about that.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think a lot of peoplekind of question that,

saying, you know, "Rachel,I would have said no,"

but the thing is I knewwho my husband was,

when I married him.

I knew he had those bigdreams and passions,

and I wanted to support him,

because I knew this is something

that could either drivea wedge between us,

or it can make us grow closer together.

- Harold, you say thatyou were not climbing

just to see what you were made of,

but you had a greater goal.

What was your greater goal?

- We did, so I mentor,really a father, like to me

was Command Sergeant Major Todd Burnett.

He was second in charge at West Point.

He had struggled with PTSD,

honestly, to the point ofwanting to take his own life.

And there was a personthat I had looked up to

more than anything in this entire world,

realized the realities of war,

and what he had struggled with.

And so we made it our mission to climb,

to raise awareness, forposttraumatic stress.

- Mount Everest has claimed the lives

of hundreds of climbers.

Some of whose frozen bodiesare still on that mountain.

You pass them on the way upand again, on the way down,

what were the greatest hardshipsthat you had to endure?

- Wow, I'll tell you for me,

something I got caught up in,

that I'm quite frankly not proud of

is you see the dead bodies andyou see all the challenges,

you see that the steep cliffsthat are 7000 foot falls.

But I got so fixatedon reaching the summit.

You'll read about it in the book,

that I was willing to sacrificeeverything in my life,

including my wife, includingnow sitting in this moment,

we have two boys, we have a two year old,

who's downstairs rightnow with our grandmother.

And I was willing to sacrifice all that,

to make it to the top.

And you know, sadly at the time,

I didn't see those dead bodies,

and it didn't even registerto me, that that could be me.

That could be what I'msacrificing on the other side.

- But it very well could have been you.

I mean, those bodies represent people

who also thought they weregonna make it to the top.

And Rachel, that had tobe heavy on your mind,

as you are at home needing,

this was an elongated process.

I mean, how long was Harold gone?

At least a couple of months, wasn't it,

with the training and everything?

- Yeah, yeah, it was 63 days.

- Wow, what did you, how did you cope?

What did you do to keep thisall faith based for you?

- Yeah, so absolutely.

I mean, it is so easy to think about the

what-if questions, and tojust let fear cripple you.

And so I knew I needed more for myself,

and so I chose faith andI chose to fill my time

with life enriching things.

So for me, that was traveling,

I packed up my bags, I went to Guatemala,

I went to Ireland, I went to Scotland.

I visited my friends in Nashville,

and you know, the whole time,

of course I was prayingfor my husband's safety,

but I was really prayingfor something bigger.

And that was just thatwhatever the outcome was,

because I wasn't blind to the fact

that I could lose my husband,

that God would just use thisstory, and work through it.

And at the end of the day,

he would carry me through it,

because I knew I didn'thave the strength on my own.

And I needed that from God.

- Harold, you made it to the top and back.

What was the biggest takeawayfrom achieving your goal?

- Wow, I think for me that I realized,

I had thought about what itwas like to make it to the top,

every single day for a year and a half.

I had dreamed about thatin my barracks room,

as I laid and stared atthe ceiling late at night,

I had thought about it, you know,

every day after I was married.

But to tell you the truth,when I made it to the top,

while it was incredibly beautiful,

one of the beautiful sights I'd ever seen,

it wasn't that moment thatI had hoped that it was.

And I think that itbecame very clear to me

that life is so much more

than just reaching that end state.

It's about the journey.

It's about how God is workingthrough you, and in you,

at all times, not just forthat final point in your life.

- Well, and you say alsothat when you got to the top,

(laughing) you realized, oh my word,

I have to climb back down this baby.

(laughing)

That has to be daunting, becausenow you're freezing cold.

You can hardly breathe,your body is exhausted,

and you have to go all the way back down.

How did you draw up enoughwithin you to make that happen?

- Yeah, so let me tellyou, I'm a Georgia boy.

So it was cold at the top, Iwas ready to get down quick,

and to sort of, to tell you the truth,

so we've been climbing, soit's about 30 hours total

that we were climbing.

So no sleep, and 95% of the deaths

actually happened on the way down,

because I think that thisis such a truism to life.

I think that we make it, andwe think that we've made it,

but yet that journey onthe back end is the one

that actually gets us.

That's true with PTSD, for example.

And so for us, we knew wehad to make it back down,

and we actually got hit,if you read the story,

we get hit with a really nasty storm,

about 75 mile an hour winds,our team was split up.

We weren't together.

So it was a very difficultjourney on the way down.

Definitely one where death was real.

Death, it was the first time

that I had honestly been terrified,

in a way that I can't evenexplain in this moment.

- Wow, what are you both doing now?

- (laughing) Good question.

So we have a YouTube channel.

It's called "Earls Family Vlogs,"

where we share our daily life,

just in hopes to be relatable to people,

and to show we're not perfect humans,

but the way that God can workthrough it every single day,

and the way that we can love one another.

That's definitely ourhope is to inspire people,

not to settle in a relationship,

or in what they wanna pursue in life.

- And then I am a activeduty Army officer.

So I'm currently theCommander of the Guard,

at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

- How wonderful.

Well, I want to say you have called out

many amazing life lessonsfrom your experience,

and they're all herein "A Higher Calling,"

and I just want to promotethat opportunity online

to visit with them as well,

but "A Higher Calling,"

it's the story of love,faith, and Mount Everest.

And it's all here for your enjoyment.

Thanks so much for being withus, both of you, bless you.

- Yeah, thank you.- Hey, thanks for having us.