the summit stephen
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The Summit’s Stephen reveals what happened after he was left dangling by his fellow trekkers

"It was like a sliding doors moment."

TV
WRITTEN BY Anita Anabel / Edited BY Anita Anabel
15 May 2023 , 3 minutes to read

The Summit 2023 premiered with the ultimate blindside on Sunday, May 14, when Stephen Butler was literally left hanging by his fellow Trekkers.

After reaching a bridge on the second day of the climb, the father-of-two drew the short straw when the Mountain’s Keeper tasked them with the “ultimate sacrifice”.

Entering the bridge last Butler made great headway, before Isaac Compton wielded an axe cutting the rope.

“I kicked myself coming off,” he told Chattr in an interview prior to his elimination. “I was the first one there but then allowed Brooke [Kilowsky] to read out the note and she said, ‘Well, I’ll be the person who is going to run it’. It was like a sliding doors moment because I would have been the first one across and away I went.”

Stephen on The Summit. Nine

Butler’s elimination was nothing short of brutal. To make matters worse, the other Trekkers were shown walking away as he dangled above a deep crevice and even though The Summit team pulled him back via a rig, he was determined not to go home.

“They [the other contestants], obviously they knew it was coming and not me,” he said. “So I sort of got wound back to where I started. In terms of clarity of mind and what was going on, at that point I had it in my head, ‘What do I need to do here?’ because I thought they were just going to say, ‘Okay, well, you can now pave your own way.’”

The Trekkers had no idea what they were in for 

According to the sock designer, the cast were only “drip-fed” information about what the show was actually about. 

“We were thrown in to the deep end,” he said. “And because you were only drip fed tiny bits of information… I mean, the premise was, you have two weeks to get to the top of a mountain to win a million dollars and then we met Jai [Courtney] and he gave it some context. And then it was like, ‘Off you go, guys.’”

The Summit 2023 Trekkers. Nine

Of course, not being given much information was a well-thought out plan for the producers, because what transpired was Survivor-style gameplay and according to Butler, it meant that there were “strategic players” from the get-go.

“I think realistically speaking, this is a game and it’s to be played and you have to be strategic,” he said. 

The Summit continues on 9 and 9Now at 7.30 pm.

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