Climbing Gold

Far away from Yosemite’s spotlight on a crumbly backwater cliff, an unknown climber was about to change a sport by breaking some of its most sacred rules. Today, we are all very grateful he did. We talk with Alan Watts, pioneer of sport climbing in America, about the highs and lows of breaking the status quo. There’s an upside and a downside to every risk we take. 

British trad climbing might be the most unique flavor of all. Is it an audacious game of risk or merely a fast track to a Darwin award? In 2000, while following in the footsteps of his heroes, a young James McHaffie booted up in front of the famed Masters Wall and launched upwards. What followed was a four hour fight for survival. Hazel Findlay helps supply perspective on the strange craft of Brit...

This year's Olympic climbers weren’t the original USA climbing team. That honor actually goes to a rag-tag group of adventurous dirtbags including Beth Wald, Russ Clune and Todd Skinner, who managed to travel to the USSR at the tail end of the Cold War to compete in a one of a kind climbing competition.

Were the Olympics more a bust than a boom? If you had $20 million to grow the sport of climbing how would you spend it? Are we at the end of the era where we climb alongside the pros? The Climbing Gold Team takes a look back at the learnings from season 2 and looks into the future of our sport.

These are the things in the shadows that no one wants to talk about. The open secrets elite athletes carry. The behaviors coaches would prefer not to see. The hard realities fans tend to ignore about the sport playing out in front of them. Today, Kai Lightner and Beth Rodden help us shine a light on disordered eating in climbing.

As climbing grows and enters into mainstream consciousness, we’d be naive to think that money won’t play a role. What does it take to “go pro” in climbing? How does the business of climbing evolve so that it doesn't fall into the same pitfalls that plague other sports? We dive into these questions with Rick Burton, a professor at Syracuse University Professor and Jonathan Retseck, founder of RXR S...

What goes through a climber’s brain when the lights shine and the cameras go live at a world cup stop? Ashima Shiraishi takes us on a journey into the heart and mind of a true competitor. 

To move a sport forward, you have to take it apart and put it back together again. Today, we talk with two thought leaders in climbing’s next chapter -- routesetters Tondé Katiyo and Adam Pustelnik -- about the craft of creating movement and we introduce a concept every climber should know about.

Right now, the spotlight shines brightly on the newest generation of competition climbers, but the path they’re following was blazed by those before them. Today, we talk with Alex Johnson, or AJ, who has ridden the highs and lows of professional climbing over the last 20 years. She won her first bouldering national competition at age 12 before going on to win two golds at Bouldering World Cups. He...

Armando Menocal worked to save climbing in America and helped kickstart it in Cuba. While developing the international climbing destination of Viñales, Armando met the love of his life. They planned to get married, but the Cuban government had other ideas. 

After four days of alpine starts to watch climbing at the Olympics, Alex and Fitz catch up with producers John Burgman and Leici Hendrix for a laugh-filled breakdown of the good, the bad and the ugly. Ultimate fandom. Cable subscriptions. Math on the fly. 

In 2019, The US Olympic Committee gave USA Climbing a one in 10,000 chance of winning a medal. Two years later, USA Climbing sent four climbers to Tokyo. Americans are winning World Cup competitions like never before. What happened? The sleeping giant woke up. 

When it comes to the Olympics, we will probably never see a climbing competitor like Kyra Condie again. While other competitors in Tokyo have had the benefit of robust, government-funded national programs or boutique climbing teams, 25-year-old Kyra has spent the better part of a decade as her own coach and trainer while navigating the highest levels of international competition. 

Alex and producer John Burgman walk us through the upcoming competition, make their picks for the gold and explain why the world’s best climber is probably the underdog.

The decades long courtship between the Olympics and climbing reads like some bizarro script for a rom com. It seemed like a sure fire thing until curling got in the way. Alex and Fitz interview John Burgman, author of High Drama and an expert on competition climbing. We breakdown climbing’s journey to make its Olympic debut.

Is climbing defined by adventure or athleticism? How does a sport grow and evolve? Alex and Fitz discuss these questions and other nuggets as they reflect on the first part of the series. And we reveal one of Alex’s pet peeves. 

Ship Rock. The Totem Pole. Spider Rock. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean we should climb it. We dive into the troubled relationship between climbers and tribes and take apart the inaccurate story the climbing community has been telling itself for decades. Climbers Aaron Mike, Len Necefer and Tara Kerzhner help brush away the chalk to reveal a deeper story.

Sean “Stanley” Leary never got a lot of media attention, but he was a driving force in the progression of the sport and beloved by the climbing community. He held numerous speed records in Yosemite, pioneered new routes on Baffin Island and was on the leading edge of wingsuit flying. Alex shares some of his memories of climbing with Stanley. 

After a protracted battle over bolts and sport climbing, American climbers nearly lost the ability to climb on public lands in the early 1990s. It would have completely altered the course of our sport. Fortunately, lawyer and climber Armando Menocal rose to the challenge of protecting climbing for generations to come, despite the fact that many climbers hoped he would fail. We take a peek into the...

From our co-creators at the Dirtbag Diaries, we're sharing a story about a type of climbing that we haven’t touched on in this series: Alpinism. In the summer of 2019, Steve Swenson, Mark Richey, Graham Zimmerman, and Chris Wright, made the first ascent of Link Sar, a 7,041 meter peak in the Karakoram. Steve, who’s been climbing for over 50 years, had attempted the peak two other times. This time,...

As climbing gyms become a global crag of sorts, how do we welcome people in? Do climbing gyms become a country club or the mechanism for broadening the community and unleashing a wave of new talent into climbing? Memphis Rox has redrawn the model for what a climbing gym can do. Designed to be more than just a state of the art climbing gym, it is a not-for-profit community center located in the hea...

Beth Rodden inspired a generation of climbers with her incredible free ascents of El Cap and hard trad climbs. Her leap into that realm began at an impromptu pizza party hosted by Lynn Hill. When a living legend asks you to ditch university and come to Madagascar, the only answer is “Yes.”

By the mid 2000’s climbing was growing, but the ephemeral first ascents were harder to find. Enter BASE jumping. The leaders of our sport stepped to the edge and jumped into the golden age of human flight. With it, a whole new element of risk arrived in climbing. We talk with Randy Leavitt, Chris McNamara and Steph Davis, who helped pioneer the movement. 

El Cap. Free. In a day. Putting those words on your resume puts you in the league of legends. How did that become the bar? Lynn Hill. A singular athlete who stepped up to the biggest stage in climbing, Lynn redefined what was athletically possible for not just her generation, but generations to come. Emily Harrington and Beth Rodden add their perspective on the momentous achievement.

In the summer of 1954, John Gill took his first climbing trip to Colorado. Tired of trudging up the steep mountain peaks and without a partner, Gill hitched a ride with a milkman to solo the east face of Longs Peak, a remarkable feat for a 17-year-old beginner climber from Georgia.